Development of a climbing robot for inspection

With the growth of offshore oil and gas industry, there has been (a lot of advancements in the field of inspection and maintenance of the oil reservoirs and pipelines) an increasing demand of special equipments for the inspection and maintenance of huge oil reservoirs and pipelines. To meet these demands many companies have developed and offered new technologies to maintain the vast assets of the oil companies. The major issues in the maintenance of the steel tanks and pipes are to deal with the unexpected corrosion and cracks in the pipes and tanks (which can be hundreds of kilometers in length and about 15 meters in height respectively) which are required to be repaired well in time. This requires a routine checkup of all tanks and pipes which demand large manpower and money. Although there are many tools available to detect the corrosion and cracks in the pipes and tanks very effectively, there use is confined to a small area, which necessitates non productive and dangerous work of erecting scaffolding to reach the elevated pipes and tanks. The wall climbing robots serves a solution to such problem by carrying the equipment and performing the tests by remote operation at hard to reach places making the whole act safer and more cost effective. The aim of this project is to design a wall-climbing robot to scan external surfaces of gas or oil tanks or pipelines and inspect defects with non-destructive sensors. The robot also needs to be semi-autonomous. The robot should also be capable of carrying multiple sensors, electronic circuits, computational resources, wireless communication devices etc. A wall-climbing robot should not only be light but also have a large payload so that it may reduce excessive adhesion forces and carry instrumentations during navigation. Based on the above assumptions and specifications, the project is divided into four phases, e.g. System Design Phase, Mechanical Design Phase, System Integration Phase and Experiment Phase.