Development of a novel crawler mechanism for pipe inspection

In this paper, we propose in-pipe cylindrical crawler mechanism. Our proposed cylindrical tracked-crawler robot has six rubber crawler belts in axial symmetry to a cylindrical frame. The robot drives by only a single geared motor through a single worm gear. It can run in a narrow pipe. Also, it can move upward inside vertical pipe while holding itself by the elastic force of the crawler belts. Moreover, the proposed crawler mechanism can propel steps and pass elbows, by deforming the crawler belt passively along the pipe shape. In experiments, the prototyped crawler robot had good running performance in various pipe conditions.