Non-standard robots for NDT of pipe welds

Non Destructive Testing (NDT) is a field where the standard architecture of the robots (such as common industrial robots) may be hardly applicable. That fact stems from necessity to ensure not only high accuracy, repeatability and dexterity but especially appropriate robot architecture (joints, links and actuation systems layout) for minimizing the robot footprint as well as advanced control system including special and nonstandard trajectory planning algorithms. The paper provides brief overview of the two NDT robots which were developed in cooperation with major czech companies dealing with non-destructive inspections (especially NDT of pipe welds in nuclear power plants). The main advantages of proposed robots in comparison with competitive solutions are unique and active pipe moving system (Vendy robot) and special architectures and trajectory planning algorithms for complex pipe welds inspection (Sava robot).