A biologically-inspired tube inspection robot with friction-based mobility

The aging power plants are critical infrastructures that require regular inspection to ensure their longevity. Automated inspection, in particular, can save a significant amount of time and cost, and eliminate the safety concerns of manual inspection. For this purpose, we propose a biologically-inspired robot that integrates friction-based mobility and sensing. It is capable of traversing horizontal and vertical boiler tubes as well as tubes with a \(45^{\circ }\) ${45}^{\circ }$ bend. Furthermore, the friction pads on the robot fingers allow for locomotion on the rough surfaces of the boiler tubes. These pads also provide grip on non-magnetic tubes enabling the robot to be deployed on tubes made of any material. In addition, this robot has electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMAT) embedded in all of its fingers that enable defect detection during locomotion. The presented platform can inspect complex tubular structures and considerably reduce the time, cost, and hazards experienced in manual inspection.