What is it about?
Interior inspection of oil & gas pipes is a major challenge. Micro-cracks and other early-damage problems may go unnoticed. Human interior inspection very difficult; require humans either enter pipes which may not be possible, may be hazardous, time-consuming, and prone to human error. This paper discusses the design of a mobile robot that could crawl inside the pipe to inspect its interior through the use of its sensors. The robot is wireless and can be remotely controlled/monitored through a wireless connection.
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Photo by Erlend Ekseth on Unsplash
Why is it important?
by automating the interior inspection, the man-hours needed for pipe inspection can be greatly reduced, resulting in improved operations and increased productivity. Secondly, the use of sensors to perform the actual inspection eliminates human factors and their related error.
Perspectives
This work is part of the Smart Robotics research series. 2017 onwards. I find this work to be a step in the right direction towards pipe inspection automation. I can relate this work to my previous works on the Internet of Things, as well as ROS (the Robot Operating System), we could have multiple robots inspecting multiple pipes simultaneously and broadcasting their data (through the IoT framework) in real-time to command-centre, this could create a master-plan of inspection/servicing for the pipe in the whole organization. ROS platform can help in the hardware/software development of such robots. I am thoroughly excited about the possibilities.
Sami Salama Hussen Hajjaj
Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Design and Development of an Inspection Robot for Oil and Gas Applications, International Journal of Engineering & Technology, November 2018, Science Publishing Corporation,
DOI: 10.14419/ijet.v7i4.35.22310.
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