Soft pipe-climbing robot for vertical creeping locomotion

A novel two-module soft pipe-climbing robot is presented for vertical creeping locomotion. The robot mainly consists of two modules. Each module is composed of an omnidirectional bending soft actuator, two soft gears, two attitude sensors and two connectors. Based on the air chamber shape and position on bending performance, the omnidirectional bending soft actuator is designed. By analyzing the pressure-deformation relationship, two motion modes are proposed. On the arm, the creeping speed of the two-module soft pipe-climbing robot can reach 11.7 mm/s, and on the 63mm diameter PVC pipe with a load of 100 g, it can reach 3.3 mm/s. This proposed soft pipe-climbing robot has potential applications in pipe inspection and maintenance.