Vision-Based Robot for Boiler Tube

Inspection

Md. Hazrat Ali, Shaheidula Batai, and Anuar Akynov

1 Introduction

Due to the adaptability to the hazardous works in dangerous, unreachable, and

narrow environments, wall-climbing robots are much more helpful in petroleum
industries, and they have played a crucial role in robotics. Lots of wall-climbing
robots are designed for maintenance or detection [1]. Many types of pipes are being
utilized for the construction of essential lifelines in our contemporary society. When
the defect in the big pipes is caused by rust and natural calamity, it is difficult
to locate the defect. Hence, scheduled inspection is essential. Besides, the high
temperature and the big pipe is the key obstacles for human inspection. If a robot
can climb up and complete the inspection of the outside surface of a pipe, a fast
and accurate inspection result can be obtained at low cost and will be a wonderful
labor-saving process. In-line crack-detection robots are being focused for the past
years. The inspection mechanism can be divided into two sections based on their
operation and installation such as out-pipe robot and in-pipe robot [2]. The out-pipe
robots are complicated in design and development compare to the in-pipe robots.
The out-pipe robot may face various obstacles whereas the in-pipe robot may have
the fix type obstacle inside the pipe. Only the requirement for the in-pipe robot is
that during the inspection period, there should be no chemical, liquid and pipe needs
to be empty. As for the out-pipe robots, it needs to get over the obstacles such as
flange and fixtures. Even so, it has the advantage of easy installation. The key point
in designing a wall-climbing robot is to choose an appropriate adhesion mechanism.
There are four types of suction-mechanism used in designing tube inspection robots
such as suction cup mechanism, magnetic adhesion mechanism, adhesive materials,

Md. H. Ali () · S. Batai · A. Akynov

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Nazarbayev University, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan
e-mail: md.ali@nu.edu.kz

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 475

S. Smys et al. (eds.), New Trends in Computational Vision and Bio-inspired
Computing, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41862-5_45
476 Md. H. Ali et al.

and grasping mechanisms. And each of them has its advantages and disadvantages
compared to others. For instance, the suction cup is able to conduct a nondestructive
inspection task, but it needs the energy source to provide adhesion force during
the task. Magnetic adhesion mechanism is capable of supplying large amount of
adhesion force without bringing destruction to the surface.
Nevertheless, this method can only apply to ferromagnetic surfaces. Adhesion
materials as a suction mechanism need the surfaces as smooth as possible since they
can hardly serve normally on the rough surfaces. Grasping methods can be used on
a rather complicated wall surface, but they may bring harm to the surface. However,
the air suction adhesion method gives more flexibility to the robot [3].

2 Past Work

Several research teams have designed climbing robots based on adhesion mecha-
nisms [4, 5]. An inch worm-type inspection robot for the provision of the pressure
to heavy water reactor in a nuclear power plant is designed and developed by
Lim et al. [5]. However, this robot was developed for the narrow pipe and had a
speed of 1.5 mm/s while climbing. Suzuki et al. designed the magnetic-wheeled
out-pipe robot which is capable of avoiding the flange on the pipe, even though it
failed to climb along the curved pipe [6]. Li et al. presented the development of a
robot which applies to plants in operation, and it is able to climb on both the non-
curved as well as curved wall-surface pipes of various diameters with independent,
differential drive mechanism [7]. The wall-climbing robots need to operate on a
slope, vertical wall and horizontal ceiling, thus, the stability during the movement is
critical and challenging in comparison with the traditional mobile robot. The change
in the gravitational center may lead to adhesion failure and increase in energy
consumption.
In comparison with other adhesive mechanisms [7], it has advantages such as
strong adaptability, lightness, less power-consuming, without noise, with reasonably
simple structural features [8], and with no damage to the surface which it climbs on.
Robots with electrostatic adhesion mechanism which designed by Chen et al. can
be used on different types of wall surfaces, and various kinds of movements can
be implemented together with the straight-line movement and turning movement
[8]. Getting inspiration from the climbing gaits of geckos, this wall-climbing robot
has kinematics, which is likely to a gecko’s moving principle. Unlike the climbing
of the gecko by sticking on the wall surface with Van Der Waals force, the robot
is designed by electrostatic adhesion force with the help of electrostatic adhesive
footpad. Some plant buildings are made up of the steel wall, in particular, the
chemical plants, oil tanks, and nuclear plants have steel walls. In these plants,
the regular inspection and maintenance are essential; it is a compatible option to
use a robot which can move smoothly and steadily on the steel wall, for such
cases magnetic adhesion mechanism is preferable. Magnetic adhesion mechanism is
popular because of its competence in the stability, as well as flexibility in movement.
Vision-Based Robot for Boiler Tube Inspection 477

A robot which is in direct contact with the surface material by the magnetic wheel
was designed by Ishihara [9]. This robot is made up of six wheels including two
driving wheels and four passive wheels in possession of suspension and caster
mechanism as well as magnetic tires. Also, the robot can get over a gap of 10 mm,
which needs improvement.
Boonyaprapasorn et al. developed a robot which carries the electromagnetic
acoustic transducer probe and cameras to deal with the inspection of the actual
location [10]. Moreover, this robot has a mechanism which can switch it from
vertical movement to horizontal movement in the absence of a steering process.
The adhesion provision comes from the magnetic wheels and magnetic bars located
beneath the robot. The robot moves up and down vertically with the belts which are
driven by the magnetic wheels. Pneumatic adhesion Robot can climb onto a variety
of materials, including both ferromagnetic as well as non-ferromagnetic materials
[11]. The primary pneumatic mechanisms to get adhesion force are suction cups
and negative pressure-thrust, respectively. Suction Cups are relatively popular due
to their simple designs and principle of operation. However, the main drawback is
the continuous need for attaching and detaching to or from the surface for gaining
further locomotion. Hence, this drawback always brings an adverse effect and limit
their moving speed. They also experience suffering from the leakage of vacuum over
time, as well as sensitivity to cracks and abnormalities in the surface material, which
leads to the loss of adhesion force. A wall-climbing robot which was designed by Ge
et al. based on the air suction cup method. It mainly consists of a track belt, motor,
passive suction cups, pulley, guide rail, as well as the tail as shown in Fig. 1 [12].
The passive suction cups are positioned on the exterior surface of the track belt at the
interval equal. As the track belt has the flexibility, a guide rail is necessary to make
sure that the positions of the suction cups are as desired. Consequently, specific
guide rail is necessary to make the suction force of the cups well-distributed. It

Fig. 1 Model of a
wall-climbing robot equipped
with the air suction method
478 Md. H. Ali et al.

is the most crucial component of a wall-climbing robot. Besides, the track belt is
necessary to be driven by the motor with a pulley.
A pump has to be installed on the passive air suction robot to provide the constant
energy supply to sustain the attachment. Moreover, pumps usually introduce the
considerable payload problem of wall-climbing robots. A wall-climbing robot
developed by Xu et al. represents a new adhesion mechanism by the method
of biomimetic grasping claws for inspecting the wall surface of rough concrete
buildings [13]. Two types of models for the communication between grip claws
and micro-embossing are discussed.

3 Design and Development

The water wall tube in a boiler plant is made up of many tubes joined by rip
panels [14]. The abrasion and corrosion may result in reducing the boiler tube
thickness [15]. Low carbon, overheating, creep as well as hydrogen embrittlement
are regarded as the secondary and at times main damage factors. It is broadly known
that creep may appear in carbon steels at temperatures over 400–440 ◦ C, which is
the standard temperature in water-wall boiler tubes. As a preventive measure to be
boiler tube failure, a regular surface inspection is utmost necessary. A climbing robot
is designed and developed to carry out particular inspection task visually with the
help of a camera. The robot conducts an inspection process remotely with the help
of wireless communication from the ground. The robot carries a camera to conduct
a visual inspection of the boiler tube. To conduct the operation efficiently, the robot
is designed to climb up vertically to reach the target position. The toggle method
is aimed to design and to switch the robot from vertical movement to horizontal
movement when it needs to change the motion direction. Although the water wall
tube is made of metal, firstly, we choose the air suction mechanism as the suitable
adhesion method for the robot, as shown in Fig. 2 [4]. The adhesion of the robot
makes use of the air suction force to stick to the wall surface. An Android app was
developed to navigate the robot on the boiler tube.

Fig. 2 3D model of the

pneumatic adhesive robot
Vision-Based Robot for Boiler Tube Inspection 479

The robot had some disadvantages, as discussed earlier as it was developed

based on the Pneumatic adhesion principle. The second robot was developed based
on the magnetic adhesion principle, and it gives far better performance than the
pneumatic adhesion robot. Since the weight of the robot is the crucial factor in
moving vertically, plywood is used as the frame of the robot. Consequently, the
weight of the frame is meager and can be neglected. The dimensions of the frame
are 160 × 200 mm with a tolerance of 10 mm. Also, a hole was drilled in the middle
of the frame to install a magnet and two DC motors that are connected to the bottom
of the robot. All the other components, such as a controller, sensors, and batteries
are fixed on top of the frame.
The robot is equipped with an HC-05 Bluetooth module in order to get remote
control over the prototype. It is the critical component which is connected in
Master and Slave configuration. Master configuration lets the robot to initiate the
connection while Slave configuration can only receive the initialization. Software-
Serial.h library is used in the Arduino platform to develop communication. After
activating the Bluetooth, a smartphone can control the robot with the help of the
app. According to the manufacturer, the robot can be operated in a range of 30 m
distance. Additionally, the information about the surface conditions is obtained by
the image processing algorithm using a camera. The camera can save the image
in JPEG format. Based on the recorded image, the defects can be determined. An
android app drives the robot, and it can easily be controlled from a remote distance.

4 Preliminary Inspection Results and Discussion

Figure 3 shows the developed prototype for inspecting the long pipes and tubes. A
camera is attached to the robot for detecting the cracks on the external surface of the
pipes and tubes. It is the second version of the robot which can climb the wall with
a belt-type wheel driven by a pair of DC motors.

Fig. 3 The developed robot

with a camera
480 Md. H. Ali et al.

Fig. 4 The robot is climbing the pipes and recording images

Fig. 5 Saved images by the magnetic adhesive robot

Figure 4 shows the robot climbing on the tubes approximately having a diameter
of 500 mm. The robot is controlled by a remote controller app developed on android
platform. The remote controller navigates the robot in four different directions,
namely upward, downward, left, and right. The test pipe diameter is chosen to be
500 mm, and a height of about 10 m. From the figure, it can be seen that the robot
can climb both on the vertical and inclined surfaces with enough adhesion force.
Figure 5 shows the images taken by the camera. The camera records the images
of the pipes and tubes while climbing on it. Initially, the camera is positioned at
a distance of 45 mm far from the wall. As the location is very close, the recorded
Vision-Based Robot for Boiler Tube Inspection 481

images are not very clear, but it can still inspect the wall to find the cracks on the
outer surface. The robot needs to travel through the inner surface to inspect the inner
surface of a pipe or tube. It is very time consuming, and costly process as the plant
should be stopped and start again. Normally, the outer surface inspection gives an
overall idea about the structural health of the pipes and tubes. However, sometimes,
a crack may occur from inside which is invisible from the outer surface and to solve
this problem, a new method should be developed.

5 Conclusions

Based on the review of various types of adhesion and locomotion mechanisms, the
boiler tube inspection robot has been developed successfully. The switching device
of the robot enables the robot to alter the motion from vertically to horizontally.
With the help of the sensor, the inspection of the pipe and tube wall diameter is
simpler and more appropriate than the conventional methods. The proposed robot
can be used to detect and find the cracks on the outer surface of the pipes and tubes in
the petroleum industry. Some other areas of application are on the structures which
are vulnerable to the failures, such as long bridges, big tunnels, tall buildings, a
big vehicle such as ships, airplanes, etc. Currently, the robot carries an inspection
camera, and it is able to inspect the wall surfaces with a range of variable surface
profiles to determine the creep, cracks, decays, and defects. The designed and
developed robot can be used in a place where a human being is not capable of
reaching and having a high risk to life such as high-temperature boiler tube. Thus,
the robot increases the safety of the plants and reduces the risk to human life.

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