配管内検査ロボットのケーブル摩擦軽減ユニットの検討

抄録

In recent years, there has been a growing need for robotic inspection of aging pipelines. In our previous works, various in-pipe inspection robots have been developed. However, experiments revealed that the robot could travel only 15 m long with 13 bends. The key factor of this travel performance is that the frictional force between the power and communication cable and the inner wall of the pipe. This paper proposes a middle drive unit located between the robot and the commander computer for reduction of the friction. The dimension parameters of the unit for passive rotation in a bent pipe were determined by geometric analysis and verified by experiments.