Host: The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
Name : [in Japanese]
Date : June 05, 2019 - June 08, 2019
Recently, with aging piping facilities increasing, demand for inspection of pipes is growing. However, conventional manual inspection is difficult for underground and high place pipes. Therefore, development of pipe inspection robots is desired. The pipe inspection robots using fluidic flexible actuators have advantages of simple structure and high safety for pipes. However, depending on the length of fluidic supply tube, movement distance is limited and response is delayed. So we developed a mechanism that has a fluid supply source and moves like inchworm. It has a bellows actuator for moving robot forward in the center, and two balloon actuators that inflate and fix the front and rear of the robot. These actuators are connected with two tube pumps to move the internal fluid. By controlling internal fluid volume at a certain sequence, the robot moves in pipes. Proceeding in the pipe of the robot was confirmed.
