An In-Pipe Manipulator for Contamination-Less Rehabilitation of Water Distribution Pipes

The recent development of in-pipe robots (IPR) with locomotion and inspection functions provides a new possibility to water distribution pipe maintenance - to rehabilitate pipe defects internally. Yet only a limited number of Rehabilitation in-pipe robots (R-IPR) have been proposed. One primary concern that impedes the development of Rehabilitation in-pipe robots is the excessive amount of contamination generated during the rehabilitation process. Correspondingly, we propose a novel concept: Contamination-Less in-pipe Rehabilitation (CLR) and develop the CLR in-pipe robot as an innovative solution. The proposed robot contains three modules for pipe-surface sealing, pipe-wall cleaning, and in-pipe manipulation. This paper centers on the comprehensive design of the manipulator module. First, the manipulator features a high-DoF configuration to deploy the other two modules simultaneously. Second, the configuration adopts a nested-outer-inner architecture to ensure the seal always encloses the pipe-wall cleaning device. The holistic and detailed design process of the manipulator, including design concept, kinematics, load requirements, design for manufacturing, and simulated deployment, are presented. Eventually, the fully implemented robot accomplished the first Contamination-Less in-pipe Rehabilitation.