Development of Laboratory-scale Pipeline Inspection Robot (PIR)

Investment on pipeline inspection and maintenance with the aim to extend the pipeline lifetime, optimize flow efficiency and prevent failure has always been a magnifying concern of the industry in recent time. However, the existing methods poses several problems such as labour demanding, time intense, slow motion and inconsistency of sensor performance which leads to ineffectiveness of inspection task. Inline Pipeline Inspection Robot (PIR) is proved to be able to provide visual inspection, documentation, specific defects identification and reach inaccessible locations inside the pipeline. Hence, this project proposed to use wheeled type robot based on Lego Mindstorms robot for a faster mobility in horizontal pipeline. At the same time, Colour Sensor is installed for the simulation purpose to detect cracks that are represented with different tape colours, such that BLUE as slant crack, YELLOW as longitudinal crack and RED as transverse crack. Communication between two NXT bricks through Bluetooth connection has been established for data transmission. Camera is attached for the purpose of monitoring the video of real-time inner pipeline condition from another device outside of the pipe. The performance of robot and Colour Sensor under different lightning conditions, ideal speed, ideal distance from inner pipe and ideal inclination angle are studied and tested. The optimal distance between sensor and inner pipe wall under bright and dark conditions is proven to be 3.5cm. The robot performs the best at the speed of 20 with 180 degree sensor scanning. The accuracy of detecting slant, longitudinal and transverse cracks are 70%, 90% and 90% respectively. Furthermore, the robot is able to drive up and down the pipe at the angle ranged from -30º to +20º. As compared with the existing crawler type, this PIR has better performance.