A fully driven wheeled pipe robot is designed to understand the dynamic characteristics of pipe robots over a curve in detail. Influences of the changing distance Δx between the center of mass and the center line of the pipeline on the motion characteristics of the robot are analyzed based on the coordinate transformation method
and the effects of the relative distance on the force on the robot are analyzed based on the principle of mechanical virtual work. The motion state and contact force of the robot are simulated through the ADAMS software. It is found from the analysis that the relative distance increases rapidly at first and then reduces at a lower speed during the cornering process. The motion state has the following characteristic that the speed of the outer drive wheel increases and the speed of the inner drive wheel reduces as Δx increases. When the speed of the inner drive wheel reaches its minimum value
the ratio of the speed of the outer drive wheel to the inner drive wheel has small fluctuation. The contact force between both inner or outer drive wheels and the pipe wall increases as Δx increases. Simulation also shows that the ratio of the contact force between the outer drive wheel and the pipe wall to the contact force between the inner drive wheel and the pipe wall is 1.4 during entering elbow stage
while this contact force ratio reduces to about 0.9 during exiting elbow stage. It is found from the standpoint of stability that the transitional period is relatively unstable in both the motion and the stress compared to the two stages of entering and exiting. Therefore
when the cornering process of a pipe robot is analyzed
considering Δx variation in the motion analysis equation will be beneficial to obtain its more accurate dynamic characteristics.
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