Cylindrical elastic crawler mechanism for pipe inspection inspired by amoeba locomotion

The diverse pipe installations used today include pipelines in chemical plants, water pipes, and gas pipes. Severe accidents at such pipe installations must be prevented by regular pipe inspection and repair. As described herein, a novel tracked crawler mechanism is proposed for pipe inspection. This simple and compact cylindrical elastic tracked crawler has multiple crawler belts in axial symmetry to a cylindrical frame, driven solely by a single motor via a single worm. It is suitable for propulsion through a narrow pipe. It can propel itself upward in a pipe using elastic force generated by deforming the crawler belt passively. Moreover, the proposed tracked crawler can cross over a level difference and pass an elbow by deforming the crawler belt passively along the pipe shape. For a prototype tracked crawler, running performance experiments conducted in various pipe conditions yielded good results. This study clarified the relation between belt rigidity and traction force in theory and experiment respectively.