• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.121-129
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• 2000

The robotic automation in NonDestructive Testing(NDT) is a promising field of research and it helps to expand the applications of NDT enormously. Especially, in the case of pipelines which are widely used in various industrial facilities, it is required to secure adequate ways of inspection in the usual maintenance activitites. In this paper, we present a robot system for inpipe inspection of underground urban gas pipelines. The robot is configured as an articulated structure like a snake with a tether cable. Two active driving vehicles are located in front and rear of the system, respectively and passive modules such as a NonDestructive Testing module and a control module are chained between the active vehicles. The proposed system has outstanding mobility by employing a new steering mechanism called Double Active Universal Joint, which makes it possible to cope with complicated configurations of underground pipelines. Characteristic features of the system are described and the construction of the system is briefly outlined.