Application of robotics in offshore oil and gas industry- A review Part II

Mining accidents have occurred since the early days of mining. Therewere a total of 525 mining disasters (incidents with five or more fatalities) in both coal and metal/nonmetal mines from 1900 through 2007 in the United States, resulting in 12,823 fatalities. Most of these disasters involve mine rescue teams, which are specially trained to perform search and rescue operations in extremely hostile environments. Robots have a great potential to assist in these underground operations, searching ahead of rescue teams and reporting conditions that may be hazardous to the teams. When explosive conditions exist or when heavy smoke or unstable ground conditions prevent team members from entering a mine, robots can become an invaluable tool.

Mobile robots in mine rescue and recovery

http://roboticslab.uc3m.es/roboticslab/sites/default/files/montero2015past-preprint.pdf

Past, present and future of robotic tunnel inspection

Inspection and Structural Health Monitoring techniques for Concentrated Solar Power plants

To move freely, in-pipe robots must be able to adapt to the various geometric changes of pipes Previously, we described an in-pipe robot that can adapt to changes in diameter and curvature of center curves This robot is able to estimate the forces exerted on the inner surface of the pipes and balance its posture inside the pipe using angular sensors attached to its rotational joints In this paper, a method is proposed to estimate the relative attitude between the robot's main body and the pipe using the angular sensors attached to a pantograph mechanism The use of angular sensors makes the structure of the robot simpler and more effective than the use of force or vision sensors because the normal forces and attitude can be estimated from measured angle information This geometric estimation of attitude relative to the pipes enables the robot to recognize the inclination of the pipes The PAROYS-II robot can control its normal force according to the variation in pipe inclination Thus, the proposed method could reduce power consumption and stress on the robot's parts The algorithm has been validated by multiple experiments

Yunwei Zhang

Papers

In-pipe inspection robot with active pipe-diameter adaptability and automatic tractive force adjusting