The simulation and concept of a pipe crawling robot for earthquake rescue

This paper presents the control algorithm and design of a pipe crawling robot, which can be used for the purpose of earthquake rescue and pipeline maintenance. The robot is designed to be able to intelligently alter its body shape to fit the pipe or tunnel like voids within rubble. The paper introduces a simulation to test how the robot alters its body shape to fit voids. The control algorithm uses a looking-up table method combined with a least square algorithm to predict the shape of the robot under the influence of actuators. The paper also presents details of both the hardware and software system of the robot. Results from computer simulation using MATLAB have been used to indicate the feasibility of the control algorithm proposal. Proposals for further experiments are given at the end of the paper.