CN112212122A

CN112212122A - Soft micro robot for pipeline detection and cleaning

Info

Publication number: CN112212122A
Application number: CN202011082120.2A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 刘欢; 李云鹏; 王俊尧; 佘进波; 孙功臣; 孙琪; 陈星宇; 王锐; 郎天鸿; 崔博文
Original assignee: Northeast Dianli University
Current assignee: Northeast Electric Power University
Priority date: 2020-10-12
Filing date: 2020-10-12
Publication date: 2021-01-12
Anticipated expiration: 2040-10-12
Also published as: CN112212122B

Abstract

The invention provides a soft micro robot for detecting and cleaning pipelines, which mainly comprises a cleaning module and a swinging module. The cleaning module comprises a spiral drill bit, a sliding chute, a micro motor, a cantilever support, a universal swing block, a guide rod, a fin-shaped shell and the like. The swing module comprises a permanent magnet, an electrified coil, a plug, a universal joint, a rotating motor, a pressure sensor and the like. The detection robot designed by the invention can carry out accurate detection in a narrow environment, and a mode of installing the cleaning module in the fin-shaped structure of the shell of the robot is adopted, so that the device is simplified, the complexity of the mechanical structure is greatly reduced, and the shell adopts the fin-shaped structure, so that the robot cannot rotate in a pipeline quickly. The invention has the advantages of small volume, large detection range, simple structure, low energy consumption and quick response. The method is suitable for detection of pipelines of millimeters and above.

Description

Soft micro robot for pipeline detection and cleaning

Technical Field

The invention relates to a soft micro robot for detecting and cleaning pipelines

Background

Micro robots, micro motors, and micro machines have recently received great attention from various countries. The micro robot has great application potential in various aspects such as pipeline detection, new drug research and development, gene editing and the like. With the rapid development of national economy, the application range of pipelines in various factories and cities is very wide, and the requirements on various indexes of the pipelines are improved, but in the process of long-term use, the pipelines are difficult to avoid faults such as cracks, leak holes and the like, so that the pipelines need to be checked and maintained regularly. However, because of the difference of the materials transported by the pipelines, the diameters of the pipelines and the manufacturing process have great differences, and people are required to accurately find the damaged position of the pipeline so as to avoid the damage to the pipeline caused by finding the damaged position of the pipeline. In addition, since a part of the pipeline may contain toxic gas, it is inconvenient to perform manual regular maintenance. Therefore, it is necessary to perform regular inspections using a pipeline inspection robot instead of a human, but many pipeline inspection robots have been designed and systems have been perfected.

The design firstly analyzes and compares the driving scheme of the existing pipeline detection robot, plans the driving mode of driving the propeller by the motor in combination with actual conditions, then calculates the parameters of the propeller by the existing data design, and plans the advancing mode of driving the propeller by the motor. Then, the model of the motor is selected through various constraint conditions in the design scheme. The invention has the innovation point that a novel swing head structure and a cleaning module are designed, the swing of the head camera shooting structure is realized through electromagnetic force pushing, and the visual field of robot detection is enlarged.

Disclosure of Invention

The invention provides a soft micro robot for pipeline detection and cleaning, which has small volume, large detection range and quick response. The all-round detection to pipeline inside can be realized.

In order to achieve the purpose, the invention adopts the following scheme: a soft micro robot for pipeline detection and cleaning comprises a cleaning module and a swinging module. The cleaning module comprises a spiral drill bit 306, a chute 303, a micro motor 305, a cantilever bracket 202, a universal swing block 304, a guide rod 301, a finned shell 302 and the like, and is characterized by being capable of cleaning blockage in a pipeline in real time. The swing module comprises a permanent magnet 406, an electrified coil 403, a plug 402, a universal joint 404, a rotating motor 405, a pressure sensor and the like, and is characterized in that the head is pushed to swing by utilizing magnetic field force so as to enlarge the visual field. The materials of all the components of the device are soft materials.

Further, preferably: the lower surface of the flexible swinging head of the swinging part is provided with a universal joint, and the head of the robot swings under the action of the electrified coil. When the coil is electrified with current in the positive direction, the universal joint drives the head to swing in the positive direction of the Y axis under the action of the electrified coil. When current in the opposite direction is applied to the coil, the universal joint drives the head to swing towards the Y-axis negative direction. And the rotation angle of the lower rotating motor is controlled, so that the robot can move in all directions. The plug is installed on the upper portion of rotating electrical machines, and pressure sensor is installed to the upper surface at the plug and the lower surface of yaw, and when pressure reached a definite value, can automatic reduce the electric current, avoids electrical coil to produce plastic deformation. The upper part of the swing module is provided with a camera 401 and an energy supply battery 407, and the shell of the swing is closed by a bag-shaped structure 101. The two sides of the rotating motor are respectively provided with a retainer 201, and the lower part of the electrified coil is provided with a permanent magnet.

Further, preferably: the cleaning part sliding groove is arranged in a fin-shaped structure of the robot shell, and each fin-shaped structure is separated by 90 degrees. The two ends of the guide rod are respectively provided with a universal swinging block, the universal swinging blocks at the two ends are respectively connected with the micro motor and the sliding chute, and the spiral drill bit can clean different positions by controlling the swinging of the universal swinging blocks in different directions. When the blockage is detected, the fin-shaped structure on the shell is unfolded outwards under the support of the cantilever support, the chute is pushed out under the drive of the fin-shaped structure, and the blockage is cleaned under the control of the central microprocessor.

When the robot works, the working steps are as follows:

first, the robot advances forward under the drive of screw 103, and the screw adopts shaft coupling 102 to be connected with the robot, when advancing the corner of pipeline at present, central processing unit can carry out the analysis to the corner, controls the angle of yaw wobbling and the rotatory angle of rotating electrical machines, thereby the rethread screw advances forward and makes the robot can pass through the corner smoothly.

And secondly, directly acquiring image information through an input/output port of the central microprocessor, and controlling the current magnitude and direction of the electrified coil and the rotating angle of the rotating motor below the swinging module in real time by the central microprocessor to enable the swinging head to drive the image acquisition module to carry out all-around detection on the inside of the pipeline.

And thirdly, when the image acquisition module detects that the inside of the pipeline is blocked, the upper computer analyzes the acquired image and inputs a corresponding execution instruction to the lower computer.

And fourthly, when the lower computer receives an execution instruction sent by the upper computer, the cleaning module is controlled through the central microprocessor, the fin-shaped structure is enabled to be outwards unfolded under the action of the cantilever support, then the auger bit is pushed out forwards under the action of the sliding groove, and the auger bit can finish cleaning the blocking objects at different positions through the action of the guide rod and the universal swinging block.

Drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a soft micro-robot structure for pipeline inspection and cleaning according to the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a schematic view of the fin-shaped structure driving the cleaning module to expand outward;

FIG. 3 is a schematic structural diagram of a cleaning module;

FIG. 4 is a schematic structural diagram of a swing module;

FIG. 5 is a robot workflow diagram;

FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram of the formula calculation of the swing angle of the swing module;

the device comprises a capsule structure 101, a coupler 102, a propeller 103, a holder 201, a cantilever bracket 202, a guide rod 301, a fin-shaped shell 302, a sliding groove 303, a universal pendulum block 304, a micro motor 305, a spiral drill 306, a camera 401, a plug 402, an electrified coil 403, a universal joint 404, a rotating motor 405, a permanent magnet 406 and an energy supply battery 407.

Detailed Description

The invention mainly comprises a cleaning module and a swinging module. The cleaning module comprises a spiral drill bit 306, a chute 303, a micro motor 305, a cantilever bracket 202, a universal swing block 304, a guide rod 301, a finned shell 302 and the like, and is characterized by being capable of cleaning blockage in a pipeline in real time. The swing module comprises a permanent magnet 406, an electrified coil 403, a plug 402, a universal joint 404, a rotating motor 405, a pressure sensor and the like, and is characterized in that the head is pushed to swing by utilizing magnetic field force so as to enlarge the visual field. The materials of all the components of the device are soft materials.

When the coil is electrified with forward current, the head is driven to deflect towards the Y-axis direction under the action of the permanent magnet, and therefore the maximum deflection angle of the swing module can be obtained by utilizing the geometric relation.

The distance between the swing head rotating point and the universal joint action point can be obtained by utilizing the pythagorean theorem

The upper surface of the plug and the rotation point of the swinging head are on the same horizontal plane. The swinging head is pulled downwards under the action of the electrified coil, when the swinging head is contacted with the plug, the swinging head can not be pulled downwards any more, and the maximum relative displacement of an action point of the universal joint on the swinging head in the Z-axis direction is a, so that the maximum relative displacement of the action point of the universal joint on the swinging head in the Z-axis direction can be obtained according to a trigonometric function

The maximum deflection angle can be obtained by substituting the obtained L into

Wherein: a is the vertical distance between the swing head rotating point and the lower surface of the swing head, and b is the horizontal distance between the swing head rotating point and the action point of the universal joint on the lower surface of the swing head.

Secondly, the most important thing of the head swing mechanism designed by the invention is that the magnetic field force for driving the head to swing is far larger than the resistance force borne by the head when the head moves, and a proper number of turns of the coil and a power supply voltage need to be designed, and the magnetic field generated by the coil in the axial direction is as follows:

wherein u is₀The magnetic permeability is vacuum magnetic permeability, R is the average radius of the coil, X is the distance from the point to the center of the coil, N is the number of turns of the coil, and I is the current passing through the coil.

The number of turns and the power supply voltage value used by the electrified coil can be calculated by calculating the magnetic field generated by the coil and combining the maximum deflection angle theta of the swinging head.

And fourthly, when the lower computer receives an execution instruction sent by the upper computer, the cleaning module is controlled through the central microprocessor, the fin-shaped structure is enabled to be outwards unfolded under the action of the cantilever support, then the auger bit is pushed out forwards under the action of the sliding groove, and the auger bit can finish cleaning the blocking objects at different positions through the action of the guide rod and the universal swinging block. Thus completing the omnibearing detection of the inside of the pipeline.

Claims

1. A soft body micro-robot for pipeline inspection and clearance which characterized in that: comprises a cleaning module and a swinging module. The cleaning module comprises a spiral drill bit, a sliding chute, a micro motor, a cantilever support, a universal swing block, a guide rod, a fin-shaped shell and the like, and can clean the blockage in the pipeline in real time. The swing module comprises a permanent magnet, an electrified coil, a plug, a universal joint, a rotating motor, a pressure sensor and the like, and the magnetic field force is utilized to push the head to swing so as to expand the visual field. The invention adopts the micro direct current motor for driving, and has high displacement control precision and simple mechanical structure. Through the real-time control to the swing module, can realize carrying out omnidirectional detection in the pipeline.

2. The swing module of the soft micro-robot for pipeline inspection and cleaning according to claim 1, wherein: the permanent magnet is installed on the upper surface of the rotating electrical machine, the upper surface of the permanent magnet is an S pole, and the lower surface of the permanent magnet is an N pole. The electrified coil is connected with the universal joint, when the coil is electrified with currents in different directions, the coil and the permanent magnet stretch out and draw back under the action of force generated between the coil and the permanent magnet, the universal joint drives the head to swing in different directions under the action of the coil, the detection visual field of the head is expanded, the upper part of the rotating motor is provided with a plug, and the upper surface of the plug and the lower surface of the swinging head are respectively provided with a pressure transmitter. The maximum swing angle theta of the swing head is as follows:

3. The cleaning module of the soft micro-robot for pipeline inspection and cleaning according to claim 1, wherein: the cleaning part sliding groove is arranged in a fin-shaped structure of the robot shell, and each fin-shaped structure is separated by 90 degrees. The two ends of the guide rod are respectively provided with a universal swinging block, the universal swinging blocks at the two ends are respectively connected with the micro motor and the sliding chute, and the spiral drill bit can clean different positions by controlling the swinging of the universal swinging blocks in different directions. When the blockage is detected, the fin-shaped structure on the shell is outwards unfolded under the support of the cantilever support, the auger bit is outwards pushed out under the action of the sliding groove, and the auger bit can finish the cleaning of the blockage at different positions through the action of the guide rod and the universal swinging block.

4. A soft micro robot for pipeline detection and cleaning is characterized by comprising the following working steps:

first, the robot advances forward under the drive of screw, when advancing the corner of pipeline before, central microprocessor can carry out the analysis to the corner, controls the angle of yaw wobbling and the rotatory angle of rotating electrical machines, thereby the rethread screw advances forward and makes the robot can pass through the corner smoothly.