TUBULO II is a climbing inspection robot with for inner inspection of boiler tubes. Its locomotion principle is the inchworm type. The adhesion is realized with Magnetic Switchable Device [1]. The inner is able to operate within a tube of inner bore diameter of 25 mm or 1 inch. The robot is modular. The robot and locomotion principle are robust and withstand the harsh environment of corroded boiler tubes. The construction is resistant to water and ferromagnetic particles that separate from the wall. The robot achieves a mean speed of 18 cm/min.

Climbing robots require an adhesion principle in order to overcome gravity. Many physical principles have been applied for this purpose, but few are sufficiently generic. This work explores a new principle based on the use of thermal glue. A miniature thermal glue dispenser has been designed and tested. Experimental results show that the adhesion force depends on the contact surface, but an adhesion force of 8 N / cm(2) was achieved on aluminium and synthetic surfaces. Several ideas were tested to save energy for detaching the glue foot. A climbing inchworm robot using this innovative adhesion principle was designed and tested, illustrating the strength and disadvantage of this technique. This innovative approach offers a very interesting alternative solution to the known adhesion methods.

Cy-Mag3De is a magnetic climbing inspection robot with advanced mobility. It is based on an innovative, award-winning and patented magnetic design. Its mobility is further enhanced thanks to a novel active tail. The robot has a cylindrical shape of 80 mm in diameter and 233 mm in length and a weight of 1.6 kg. It is energy autonomous with distributed batteries, has a camera and sends wireless video feed-back to the remote user interface. The robot is very integrated, robust and allows excellent mobility and visual inspection in complex ferromagnetic environment. It opens new avenue for climbing magnetic inspection robots.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a novel miniature magnetic climbing robot for industrial inspection. The robot has high mobility with low complexity.Design/methodology/approachThe robot has a miniature cylindrical shape with 28 mm of diameter and 62 mm of width. The robot has two wheels. The adhesion is achieved with an advanced magnetic circuit fixed on the frame of the robot.FindingsFrom an horizontal sheet, the robot can make transition to almost any intersecting sheet from 10 to 360°. The robot passes inner and outer straight corners in almost any inclination of the gravity.Originality/valueThe novel robot opens new possibilities to use mobile robots in ferromagnetic environments with stringent size limitations, as found in power plants. The new mechanism increases mobility and opens a new avenue for inspection robotics. A patent is pending on this system.

SUMMARY We present a miniature magnetic climbing robot with dimensions 96 × 46 × 64 mm3. With two degrees of freedom it is able to climb ferromagnetic surfaces and to make inner plane to plane transitions whatever their inclination is. This robot, named TRIPILLAR, combines triangular-shaped magnetic caterpillars and frame magnets. This particular configuration allows, for example, to move from ground to wall and ceiling and back. This achievement opens new avenues to use mobile robotics for industrial inspection with stringent size restrictions, such as the ones encountered in power plants.

TREMO is a compact magnetic climbing inchworm with the capability to move in complex ferromagnetic environments, like those found in power-plants. The robot fits inside a cylinder of 500 mm in height and 120 mm in diameter for an approximate weight of 800 g. It has a modular configuration based on three energy autonomous subsystems: an arm and two feet. The arm has five degrees of freedom. It has a central articulation with a stroke of 260 degrees. Both ends of the arm have an innovative articulation based on a differential system. This allows unlimited rotation of 360 degrees in the heading angles and 180 degrees in the elevation angle. At both ends of the arm a camera is mounted. The camera can be used for visual inspection and remote control of the robot. The feet are donut-shaped and are mounted around the camera. The magnetic adhesion is realized with Magnetic Switchable Devices (MSD). Each foot of the robot embeds three MSD for better compliance and stability. The three MSD of one foot together with their motors weigh only 32 g and can hold above 100 N.

Autonomous construction by mobile robots would be useful in various situations, such as in outer space, in hazardous environments, but also for the building industry. Current works tackle simplified scenarios where environment is flat and resources readily available; moreover robots build simple structures. However, target applications would feature complex 3D environments, remote resources, and would require the construction of multi-layer structures of various types. In this poster, we show our current work in pursuing a step toward such applications. We propose a simple experimental setup where a miniature mobile robot senses its environment and finds the right course of action to build structures. Resources are remote, requiring the robot to first locate them, then to create a way to fetch them and finally to build the structure. The robot performs SLAM to build a map and uses an HTN planner to choose its actions. It manipulates its environment through a magnetic gripper.

Magnetic wheels are a powerful solution to design inspection climbing robots with excellent mobility.Magnetic wheels optimization based on simulations and the results that were obtained on prototypes are presented.The measured adhesion was doubled between the classic configuration and a novel multilayer one sharing exactly the same four magnets and the same total volume of iron.This know-how is then applied to optimize magnetic wheels for the existing robot called MagneBike.The adhesion force has been multiplied by 2 to 3 times depending on the conditions.Those amazing improvements open new possibilities for miniaturization of climbing robots or payload's increase.

This paper reports on a 3 years applied research project dealing with several inspection scenarios of power plants and resulting in many robot prototypes and 3 main achievements. The project is a common effort between industry and university, including ALSTOM together with researchers from the 2 Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology. The goal is to generate knowledge and transfer technology to the industry in the field of robot inspection. The method is to collect commercial scenarios, study them, make some exploratory prototypes, select the best scenarios and develop enhanced prototypes for the most promising applications. The 3 most evolved robots are MagneBike for steam chest, AirGapCrawler for generators and TubeCrawler for boiler tube. The supporting technologies that have been developed are adhesion, locomotion, system integration and localization.

A train-like miniature climbing inspection robot for ferromagnetic tubes is presented in this paper. Using magnetic wheels, it climbs in tubes of 25 mm of diameter and bigger in any orientation, and pass bends with curvatures above 150 mm in some cases. It has embedded electronics and energy, and can transmit images through a cable. Applications are in tubes inspections as found in power plant boilers for example.

A Magnetic Switchable Device (MSD) is a ferromagnetic circuit using permanent magnets where the flux can circulate between different paths when its configuration is changed. This routes or cancels the flux trough specific surfaces, and thus turns on or off adhesion forces. We present classic and innovative magnetic configuration to realize powerful MSD. We designed and prototyped some miniature systems and give their characteristics. Finally various robotics applications for gripper, anchor and climbing robot are unveiled where the MSD solution has proved to be advantageous.

Ce projet consiste en la miniaturisation d’un micro robot utile pour des applications biotechnologiques comme la fertilisation in vitro ou le patch-clamping, consistant en la prise de mesures electriques dans des cellules sous microscope. Pour realiser ces experiences, les biologistes requierent des robots peu encombrants afin d’en disposer de nombreux autour d’un microscope. La precision exigee est superieure a 10 [μm]. Le prototype possede 3 DDL en sortie pour un volume de travail superieur a 1 [cm3]. Il utilise des actionneurs monolithiques stick–slip developpes au LSRO permettant une grande course en gardant une excellente resolution et des deplacements en x et y. Des cameras CCD associees a une cible perforee et une LED a lumiere diffuse sont utilisees comme capteurs.