Abstract—The development of a fully autonomous pipelines inspection system requires design of a robot equipped with the required sensors. In this paper, it is designed a robot with suitable four bar mechanism that can give two linear motions one forward and another backward and carry a camera to capture the picture of defects if any in pipe lines. This self configurable robot has six powered wheels (rollers) chains with three belts and each wheel chain is operated by a micro DC motor. The new wheel chain mechanism is foldable by using a threaded rod. Using this foldable mechanism, a small-sized robot whose external diameter is 180 mm is designed. The velocity and acceleration analysis of each link is calculated for four bar mechanism. Validity of this new foldable wheel chain mechanism is proved through dynamic simulation. Based on this, the stiffness of the torsion threaded rod and the actuator size of DC motors are decided and a prototype of the pipeline inspection robot system is developed. It consists of a main body made from aluminum material and main DC motor and 6 micro DC motors to give motion to six rollers.

Index Terms—Autonomous, Pipe inspection, Microcontroller, Obstacle sensor, GSM modem

Cite: Hameedah Sahib Hasan and Sriram Venkatesh, "Design and Development of Prototype Mobile Robot for Identification of Defects in Pipelines," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp. 1-8, October 2013.