Development of mobile robot systems for automatic diagnosis of boiler tubes in fossil power plants and large size pipelines

Two types of mobile robotic systems using an NDT (nondestructive testing) method are developed for automatic diagnosis of boiler tubes in fossil power plants and large size pipelines. The developed mobile robots crawl on the outer surface of the tubes and the pipelines to detect in-pipe defects such as pinholes, cracks and thickness reduction by corrosion and/or erosion using an EMAT (electromagnetic acoustic transducer). Automation of defect detection by mobile robotic systems for these large-scale structures helps to prevent significant problems without danger to human beings under the harmful environment.