286 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 4, NO.

3, SEPTEMBER 1999

Micro Inspection Robot for 1-in Pipes

Koichi Suzumori, Member, IEEE, Toyomi Miyagawa, Masanobu Kimura, and Yukihisa Hasegawa

Abstract— A micro inspection robot for 1-in pipes has been

developed. The robot is 23 mm in diameter and 110 mm in length
and is equipped with a high-quality micro charge-coupled device
(CCD) camera and a dual hand for manipulating small objects
in pipes. It can travel through both vertical pipes and curved
sections, making possible inspections that would be difficult with
conventional endoscopes. Its rate of travel is 6 mm/s and it has a
load-pulling power of 1 N. To realize this microrobot, the authors
have specially designed and developed several micro devices and
micromechanisms: a novel micromechanism called a planetary
wheel mechanism for robot drive; a micro electromagnetic motor
with a micro planetary reduction gear to drive the planetary
wheel mechanism; a micro pneumatic rubber actuator that acts
as a hand; a micro CCD camera with high resolution; and a
pneumatic wobble motor for rotating the camera and hands. In
this paper, the design and performance of these micro devices are
reported, the performance of the robot as a whole is described,
and an application example is given.
Index Terms—Microactuator, micromachine, microrobot, pipe
inspection.
Fig. 1. Configuration of micro inspection robot.

I. INTRODUCTION
dual-hand system with six degrees of freedom for manipulating

T HE need to carry out inspections inside small pipelines

has grown recently [1]–[5], with particular demand re-
lating to the 1-in pipelines often found in chemical plants,
heat exchangers, and gas or water supply systems. Some
basic research on mobile mechanisms for use in pipes with
smaller than 1-in inner diameter has been reported. These
examples are driven by piezoelectric actuators [6]–[8], by
giant magnetostrictive actuators [9], by pneumatic actuators
[10]–[11], or by electromagnetic actuators [12].
However, these robots are still at the research stage and
certain problems still have to be solved before they become
practical; such microrobots for small pipes have low pulling
force and have difficulty negotiating curved pipes or verti-
cal pipes. Further, commercial charge-coupled device (CCD)
cameras are too big to mount on these robots.
The authors have developed a micro pipe-inspection robot
for 1-in pipelines that offers good mobility and has function-
ality suitable for practical use. It carries a 410 000 pixel color
CCD camera, which provides enough resolution to locate 25-
m micro cracks in the internal surface of a pipe and has a
Manuscript received July 17, 1998; revised February 12, 1999. Recom-
mended by Technical Editor T. Fukuda.
K. Suzumori and T. Miyagawa are with the Mechanical Systems Labo-
ratory, Research and Development Center, Toshiba Corporation, Kawasaki
210-8582, Japan.
M. Kimura is with the Multi Media Engineering Laboratory, Toshiba
Corporation, Yokohama 235-0017, Japan.
Y. Hasegawa is with the Small Motor Development Center, Manufacturing
Engineering Research Center, Toshiba Corporation, Yokohama 235-8522,
Japan.
Publisher Item Identifier S 1083-4435(99)07438-4.
1083–4435/99$10.00  1999 IEEE
and recovering small objects.
In Section II, the configuration of the robot system and
its micro-functional elements—a new wheel mechanism, a
micro electromagnetic motor, a pneumatic micro actuator for
the hands, a micro CCD camera, and a pneumatic wobble
motor—are described. Section III gives some performance
data and describes an application of the robot.
II. ROBOT SYSTEM AND MICRO DEVICES
A. System
Figs. 1 and 2 give an overview of the robot. It is 23 mm
in external diameter, 110 mm in length, and weighs 16 g.
Mounted on the front of the robot are a TV camera and a dual
micro hand. These enable observations of the pipe surface,
recovery of lost parts, and sampling of scaling from pipes.
Fig. 2 shows the robot carrying a small plastic cube. The
camera and the hands can be rotated around the pipe axis
by a pneumatic wobble motor, a newly developed high-torque
micro motor.
The robot has a flexible rubber link that bends passively to
allow curved pipes to be negotiated. The flexible link has a
planetary wheel mechanism at each end. These mechanisms
have essentially the same structure, but the number of wheels
is different, as shown in Fig. 1; the mechanism at the front has
fewer wheels to allow for rotation of the camera and hands.
Each consists of a set of wheels, an electromagnetic motor,
and a mechanical paradox planetary gear drive. They drive
the robot forward or backward.
SUZUMORI et al.: MICRO INSPECTION ROBOT FOR 1-IN PIPES
Fig. 2. Micro inspection robot carrying a recovered object in a 1-in pipe.
Fig. 3. Robot control system.
Fig. 3 is a diagram of the control system. The controller
consists of motor drivers for the planetary wheel mechanisms,
pneumatic valves for the pneumatic wobble motor and the mi-
cro hands, and a camera control unit. The robot and controller
are connected through four electrical cables for the two wheel
drive motors, six pneumatic tubes for the hands, six pneumatic
tubes for the wobble motor, and 12 electrical cables for the
CCD camera. Each electrical cable and pneumatic tube is about
0.4 mm in diameter. The bundle of cables and tubes total about
6 mm in diameter and 20 g/m in weight. It is flexible enough
to pass through curved pipes.
The robot is controlled manually by an operator observing
the CCD images and handling a joystick and buttons on a
control pendant.
B. Planetary Wheel Mechanism
In general, wheel mechanisms for in-pipe locomotion are
required to provide two actions: wheel rotation and forcing the
wheels against the pipe inner wall. Our planetary mechanism
achieves both with only a single motor and a simple mech-
anism that is suitable for miniaturization. The basic concept
was developed by one of the authors, and has already been
applied to a pipe-inspection robot for 2-in pipes [10]. Precise
gear fabrication by micro wire electrical discharge machining
made it possible to miniaturize the mechanism.
287
Fig. 4. Cross section of wheel mechanism: electromagnetic motor reduction
gear drive and planetary wheel mechanism.
Fig. 4 shows the principle of the planetary wheel mecha-
nism. An electromagnetic motor drives the sun gears through
a reduction gear drive and a worm gear (only one of the sun
gears is shown in Fig. 4). Each sun gear has two planetary
gears, which are carried on a triangle-shaped link that allows
them to revolve around the sun gear. The wheels are fixed to
the same shaft as the planetary gears.
To drive the robot to the left in Fig. 4, the gears rotate as
shown in the figure. The planetary gears, wheels, and triangular
links turn around the sun gear to push the rear wheels against
the pipe wall. The greater load on the robot in the pipe’s
axial direction causes an increased reaction force from
the pipe wall. This, in turn, generates torque that turns the
triangular links and pushes the rear wheels firmly onto the pipe
wall. Thus, the force pushing the wheel onto the pipe wall is
controlled mechanically according to the axial load acting on
the robot, with no need for sensors nor electric control.
The sun gears and the planetary gears have helical teeth that
match the pitch angle of the worm gear.
C. Electromagnetic Motor and Planetary
Reduction Gear Drive
Fig. 4 also shows the reduction gear drive and the elec-
tromagnetic motor. The electromagnetic motor output is con-
nected directly to the input shaft of the reduction gear indicated
by “a” in Fig. 4, and the output from the planetary reduction
gear “d” is connected to the worm gear.
Table I shows the specifications of the motor. The electro-
magnetic motor is 5 mm in diameter and 8 mm in length. It
consists of a stator yoke, which acts also as the motor casing,
six thin coils on the stator, and a rotor. The rotor consists of a
ring-shaped samarium cobalt magnet into which is inserted a
shaft supported by miniature ball bearings. The motor has no
brushes and no sensor, allowing miniaturization, and is driven
synchronously [13].
The rotor is magnetized such that it has four poles. The
stator coils are fabricated on a flexible thin film as shown
in Fig. 5, where a grain of rice is shown for comparison.
288
TABLE I
ELECTROMAGNETIC MOTOR SPECIFICATIONS
Fig. 5. Electromagnetic micro motor with a grain of rice for comparison.
Fig. 6. Planetary reduction gear drive.
The flexible film is curved for insertion into the casing ring.
Each coil is of copper wire and has 35 turns. Experimental
results indicate that the maximum torque is 0.17 N m, and the
maximum energy efficiency is 22% with an applied voltage
of 4 V.
The design of the reduction gear drive is based on a
planetary paradox gear mechanism [14]. This design offers
a simple structure which needs no retainer and no bearings,
while providing a high reduction ratio. Gears, a, b, c, and d in
Fig. 4 have a tooth module of 0.05 and the tooth numbers are
12, 29, 69, and 72, respectively. Fig. 6 shows a front view of
the reduction gear drive. The reduction ratio is 1/162.
A further speed reduction of 1/10 is achieved between the
output of the reduction gear and the planetary wheel shafts,
IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 4, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 1999
Fig. 7. Micro CCD camera head with a mechanical pencil for comparison.
TABLE II
MICRO CAMERA AND LENS SPECIFICATIONS
thus leading to a total reduction ratio of 1/1620 between the
motor and the wheel shafts.
D. Flexible Link
The flexible link, which connects the two planetary wheel
mechanisms, is made of a thin silicone rubber tube. It deforms
passively as the robot negotiates curved pipes and elbow joints.
The electrical cables and pneumatic tubes pass through it.
E. CCD Camera
Fig. 7 shows the micro CCD camera head mounted on the
robot, with a mechanical pencil shown for comparison. The
camera has a 1/4-in color CCD with 410 K pixels. It is 7 mm
in diameter, 12 mm in length, and weights 1.2 g.
This camera head includes the CCD, an optical filtering
glass, a micro optical lens, and a subordinate circuit module.
The power supply and drive signals for the CCD, such as for
vertical and horizontal timing, are supplied from the camera
controller through cables. The camera controller incorporates
digital processing functions such as automatic luminance,
which controls the iris and the shuttering period, and white
balance. Images with 470 TV lines in horizontal and 350 TV
lines in vertical resolution are obtained, and micro cracks with
25- m width on pipe surface are easily recognized. Table II
shows the specifications of the camera and lens.
To miniaturize the camera head, a new packaging technique
was used, TOG: TAB (tape automated bonding) on glass [15].
The TOG technique achieves direct bonding of the CCD onto
the optical filter, as shown in Fig. 8, giving a package size
almost the same as the bare CCD chip.
The optical filter glass cuts out light with wave lengths
longer than 700 nm. The finished camera head is 7 mm in
diameter and 12 mm in length.
SUZUMORI et al.: MICRO INSPECTION ROBOT FOR 1-IN PIPES
Fig. 8. Cross section of micro CCD camera head.
Fig. 9. Configuration of micro hands.
F. Micro Hand
Micro handling devices are often required in pipes for
recovering lost parts or sampling scaling from the pipe wall. To
provide dexterous micro hands with many degrees of freedom,
we adopt a flexible microactuator (FMA), a new type of
pneumatic rubber actuator [16].
The FMA is made of a fiber-reinforced rubber and is driven
pneumatically. It has three internal chambers, the internal
pressure in each of which is controlled independently through
flexible tubes connected to pneumatic control valves. Suitable
control of the pneumatic pressure in each chamber enables
motion with three degrees of freedom: bending in any direction
and stretching.
Fig. 9 shows a dual-hand system mounted on the robot,
consisting of two FMA’s. Each FMA is 3 mm in diam-
eter and 15 mm in length. The pressure in each chamber
is controlled digitally through six pneumatic flexible tubes
0.4 mm in outer diameter and 0.2 mm in inner diameter.
Five typical examples of FMA motion used in our applica-
tion—normal, open, down, and grasp—are shown in Fig. 9.
Table III shows the control codes used to achieve each type of
motion, where the valve numbers correspond to the chamber
numbers shown in Fig. 9. Table III also shows two sequential
operating modes—a pickup mode and a place mode—which
are achieved with a single operator action to realize to grasp
289
TABLE III
FMA HAND DRIVE CODES
Fig. 10. Cross section of pneumatic micro wobble motor.
an object from the pipe wall and to place an object against
the pipe wall, respectively.
These hands are found experimentally to be capable of
grasping any object from the pipe wall within the range from 1
to 4 mm and 1 to 3 g in weight. The response time of the hands
is about 0.5 s. Other features of these hands are: 1) waterproof
and dustproof; 2) high compliance and shape adaptability to
the shape of the object to be handled; and 3) light weight.
G. Pneumatic Wobble Motor
To rotate the camera and the hands for circular scanning
of the pipe walls, a new type of pneumatic motor has been
developed. The motor is required to generate relatively high
torque for its size because the cables and pneumatic tubes used
to supply power to the camera and the hands are stiff relative to
their size. In general, the load imposed by stiffness becomes a
bigger problem as a robot is made smaller. In the case of this
robot, a conventional electromagnetic motor cannot be used
here because it requires a reduction gear drive to increase the
torque; this would make it too long to negotiate elbow joints.
The newly developed motor is called a pneumatic wobble
motor [17]. Figs. 10 and 11 show a cross section and the
disassembled motor, respectively. It consists mainly of a
wobble generator, a wobble ring, and a rotor, as shown in
the figures. The wobble generator is of silicone rubber and
is structured with six chambers. Pressurizing each chamber
sequentially as shown in Table IV through pneumatic tubes
causes periodic elastic deformations of the wobble generator,
thereby achieving revolution of the wobble ring. The wobble
ring and rotor are made of stainless steel, and the internal gear
and the external gear are fabricated on the wobble ring and
on the rotor, respectively.
290
Fig. 11. Disassembled pneumatic micro wobble motor.
TABLE IV
SEQUENTIAL DRIVE CODES FOR PNEUMATIC WOBBLE MOTOR
The tooth number of the rotor is less than that of the wobble
ring, and the external surface of the wobble ring is attached
to the internal surface of the wobble generator to allow the
wobble ring only to revolve but not to rotate. Thus, revolution
of the wobble ring causes rotation of the rotor.
The relationship between the rotational speed of the rotor
and the revolution speed of the wobble ring is obtained
as follows:
where and represent the tooth numbers of the rotor and
the wobble ring, respectively.
In this design, and thus
This means that 35 revolutions of the wobble ring lead to one
rotation of the rotor in the reverse direction. If the friction loss
of the meshing were 0, the torque of the wobble ring would
be amplified 35 times.
Table V shows the specifications of the wobble motor. The
developed motor is 9.4 mm in diameter and 6 mm in length.
Experimental results show that the maximum torque is 7
m N m, the maximum speed is 20 r/min, and the stepping
resolution is 210 step/rev. The motor is controlled by an open-
loop method, and no slip is measured with loads smaller than
the maximum torque. The maximum torque of this motor
is about 20 times greater than that of an equivalently sized
conventional electromagnetic motor.
III. PERFORMANCE AND INSPECTION EXAMPLE
An application of the developed robot is described in this
section. The experiment was carried out in the mockup pipe
shown in Fig. 12. The configuration of the mockup is based
on an actual pipe. The pipe is of acrylic and has two elbows,
120 and 150 mm in radius, respectively. The internal diameter
of the pipe is 25 mm.
IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 4, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 1999
TABLE V
PNEUMATIC WOBBLE MOTOR SPECIFICATIONS
Fig. 12. Mockup pipe for experiment.
The robot easily negotiated the pipe from starting point A,
through the two elbows, point B, and also easily recovered 3-
mm cubes of plastic placed at point B. An operator controlled
the robot using a control pendant while watching the image
received from the camera. Fig. 13 shows images from the
camera during hand rotation and using the camera to adjust
the orientation with respect to the object. Fig. 2 shows the
robot carrying the recovered object.
The same experiment was carried out in an actual steel
pipe which had been used to supply gas, and the robot again
performed well.
Other basic experiments show that: 1) 25- m cracks on the
pipe surface can be easily recognized by the camera; 2) the
maximum travel speed is 6 mm/s and the maximum pulling
force is 1 N; and 3) the robot can pull a 5-m cable in a vertical
pipe.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
1) Miniature devices have been newly designed, developed,
and tested for use in a microrobot capable inspecting of
1-in pipes.
a) The micro electromagnetic motor, 5 mm in diam-
eter and 8 mm in length, achieves 0.17 m N m
and is used to drive the wheels.
b) The micro planetary reduction gear with a 1/162
reduction ratio is used in combination with the
micro electromagnetic motor.
SUZUMORI et al.: MICRO INSPECTION ROBOT FOR 1-IN PIPES
Fig. 13. TV images from camera mounted on robot: rotating camera and
hands to position them for object recovery.
c) The micro dual hand is based on the FMA design
and is mounted on the robot for manipulation
tasks.
d) The high-quality micro CCD camera is 7 mm in
diameter and 12 mm in length.
e) The pneumatic wobble motor (9.4 mm in diameter
and 6 mm in length) achieves torque of 7 m N m
and is used to rotate the camera and hands.
2) The pipe inspection robot has the following features.
a) The robot is 23 mm in diameter, 110 mm in
length, and weighs 16 g. The maximum traveling
speed is 6 mm/s, and the maximum pulling force
is 1 N.
b) It negotiates vertical pipes and elbows.
c) The robot can pull a 5-m cable in a vertical pipe.
d) It can recover objects from pipes.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank S. Iikura and K. Hori for their useful
advise and K. Araoka, S. Sekiguchi, N. Kojima, Y. Murata,
and S. Sugi for their assistance in manufacturing the robot.
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Koichi Suzumori (M’97) was born in Kanazawa,
Japan, in 1959. He received the B.S., M.S., and
Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from
Yokohama National University, Yokohama, Japan,
in 1982, 1984, and 1990, respectively.
He is a Research Scientist in the Mechanical
Systems Laboratory, Research and Development
Center, Toshiba Corporation, Kawasaki, Japan. He
has been with Toshiba Corporation since 1984.
His research interests include actuators, sensors,
microrobots, and electro-pneumatic devices.
Toyomi Miyagawa was born in Nagano, Japan, in
1960. He received the B.S. degree in mechanical
engineering from Shibaura Institute of Technology,
Tokyo, Japan, in 1985.
He is currently a Research Scientist in the Me-
chanical Systems Laboratory, Research and De-
velopment Center, Toshiba Corporation, Kawasaki,
Japan. He has been with Toshiba Corporation since
1985. His research interests include actuators, sen-
sors, and microrobots.
292 IEEE/ASME TRANSACTIONS ON MECHATRONICS, VOL. 4, NO. 3, SEPTEMBER 1999
Masanobu Kimura was born in Kanagawa, Japan,
in 1949. He graduated from Oomori Technical Col-
lege, Tokyo, Japan, in 1968.
He is currently with the Multi Media Engineering
Laboratory, Toshiba Corporation, Yokohama, Japan.
He joined the Toshiba Corporation in April 1969 and
worked in the Broadcasting Equipment Division,
where he was engaged in the development of a
single-tube color television camera and solid-state
color video cameras.
Yukihisa Hasegawa was born in Aichi, Japan, in
1963. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in
electrical engineering from Gifu University, Gifu,
Japan, in 1986 and 1988, respectively.
He is currently a Research Scientist in the
Small Motor Development Center, Manufacturing
Engineering Research Center, Toshiba Corporation,
Yokohama, Japan. He has been with Toshiba
Corporation since 1988. His research interests
include actuators, microrobots, and motor-driving
method.