• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.633-641
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• 2008

Recently, the necessity for diagnosis and management of pipes has emerged as the issue due to contamination of water supply generated by corrosion of pipes. Although inspection has been performed with industrial endoscopes, the method has limits for full diagnosis of pipes due to the lack of working range. As a solution for this problem, many locomotive mechanisms for a micro robot with endoscope functions were proposed. In this paper, we analyze the locomotive mechanism of crawling robot proposed as locomotive device for pipe inspection. Based on a mechanical modeling of motor and micro robot inside small pipe, the theoretical formula for velocity is obtained. This derived theoretical formula is demonstrated the feasibility through the comparison with experimental result. Also, we could find the most important element influencing the moving velocity of micro robot when the robot operates in small pipe. Consequently, it is expected that this study can supply useful information to design of crawling robot to move in small pipe.