Publication: Soft robot for in-pipe navigation
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Date
2022-07-01
Authors
Jumah Baker, Feras Mohammad
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Abstract
Soft robots are the robots that its structure designed by using soft materials which allows them to have flexible motion, and due its soft structure these robots are able to travel through narrow and difficult areas. These characteristics give the soft robots an advantage over the traditional robots. Scientists have been working on this type of robots and that’s led to have many different types such as screw type robot, Legged/walking type robot, worm-like robots and it is designed for many different tasks like using it in medical purposes as drug delivery for instance. Furthermore, soft robots are commonly used in-pipes navigation which will be the point of focusing on this research. The proposed in this research is legged soft robot for in-pipe navigation that actuated using electro-pneumatic system and consists of top and bottom chambers and each chamber has three soft extendable legs, in addition to silicone tubes to supply the air to the robot. There are many researchers which works on soft robots but most of the available soft robots able to navigate through fixed-diameter pipelines or even having rough locomotion or the cost of it, is high. So, in this system, creating smooth longitudinal motion and being able to navigate through different pipes diameter with affordable cost are some of the advantages of this robot. The experimental procedure is consisting of testing the designed control algorithm, testing the navigation of the robot in different pipe’s diameter horizontally and vertically, in addition to testing the robot navigation through corners with different angles. Based on the obtained results, the highest performance of the robot is when it navigates in straight horizontal pipe, followed by navigating through 45' corner, then in 90' corner and lastly in straight
vertical pipe.