Scientific Reports (Dec 2022)

Design and analysis of welding inspection robot

  • Pengyu Zhang,
  • Ji Wang,
  • Feng Zhang,
  • Peiquan Xu,
  • Leijun Li,
  • Baoming Li

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-27209-4
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 16

Abstract

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Abstract Periodic inspection, commonly performed by a technician, of weld seam quality is important for assessing equipment reliability. To save labor costs and improve efficiency, an autonomous navigation and inspection robot is developed. The development process involves the design of chassis damping, target detection mechanism, control system, and algorithms. For performing weld inspection in complex, outdoor, environments, an algorithm is developed for the robot to avoid any obstacles. This algorithm for planning the inspection route is based on an improved timed-elastic-band (TEB) algorithm. The developed robot is capable of conducting inspection tasks in complex and dangerous environments efficiently and autonomously.