A Biomimetic Soft Robot for Inspecting Pipeline with Significant Diameter Variation

Navigation through tubular environment is fundamental in tasks such as pipeline inspection, gastrointestinal tract inspection, etc. Conventional pipeline inspection robots are mostly made by rigid materials and could not well adapt to the large size variation of the environment. Soft robots provide an additional solution for inspection of pipelines, especially with significant size variation. In this work, we present a soft robot for pipeline inspection, which consists of an earthworm-like soft robot and a Central Pattern Generator (CPG)-based control system. An analytical model is developed to predict the maximum pipe diameter that the robot could adapt to. For the current prototype, the robot could adapt to size change of three times. Experimental results show that this robot could navigate through pipelines with sharp turnings and with large diameter change.