Transformable Inspection Robot Design and Implementation for Complex Pipeline Environment

Pipeline inspections are crucial to ensure the reliability of the transmission system. However, with the growing complexity and aging of the pipe system, traditional pipeline inspection robots struggle to adapt to complex environments with obstacles, cracks, changing cross-section, and other challenges. This letter introduces a novel transformable inspection robot with remarkable adaptability to varying pipeline environment from 163 mm to 312 mm inner diameter. The robot is composed of several motion modules that are arranged along its central axes at a 60-degree angle. The pneumatically powered robot has good active and passive deformation capabilities, enabling it to passively adapt to its surroundings and actively change between different postures. Our robot can also achieve automatic navigation in complex pipeline environments based on a LiDAR camera. Experiments demonstrate the robot adjusting to varying pipeline scenarios, including obstacles, diameter changes, turning up to 90 degrees, climbing up to 45 degrees, and crossing-section changes with a deformation rate up to 191.4$ %, overcoming the limitations of traditional designs.