A Multifunctional Magnetic Climbing Robot for Pressure Steel Pipe Inspections in Hydropower Plants
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The inlet pressure steel pipe is an important part of the hydropower unit, and its inspection tasks mainly include cleaning with high-pressure water, surface anti-corrosion layer detection and internal flaw detection. In order to accomplish the above tasks effectively, a multifunctional, non-contact magnetic, tracked climbing robot is presented in this paper. Focusing on the pressure steel pipe inspection tasks, the design of the climbing robot system is given, including the mechanism and control system. By analyzing the slippage and overturning situations, the magnetic attraction constraints for reliable adhesion are obtained, which are used as the basis for designing magnetic adhesion modules. To enable climbing robots to meet the requirement of following the welding seam during the inspections, the improved Deeplabv3+ semantic segmentation method is proposed for welding seam recognition. Experiment results show that the climbing robot can achieve reliable adsorption and flexible movement on the internal face of inlet pressure steel pipe, and the climbing robot can meet the requirements of safety and efficiency for pressure steel pipe inspection processes.
Source: Machines
Authors: Enguang Guan, Jinghui Cui, Yanzheng Zhao, Yao Wang
Institutions: Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Language: English
Topic: Power Line Inspection Robots
Subfield: Mechanical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,896
Award: G3961132777
OpenAlex ID: W4415294161