It started as a demonstration of an idea to a friend, just\u00a0a simple sketch on a board, but quickly turned into an exciting and overflowing with detail design. This was a creative challenge, "just for fun"\u00a0to see if i could create a pneumatic caterpillar robot that can carry various sensors and\u00a0cameras into tight spaces and pipe lines.<\/p>\n
It was not made to be operational, clearly there are better ways to achieve such\u00a0goals. pipe inspection robots exist in many technical fields and industries and the variety of models is impressive. the interesting design takes inspiration from the caterpillar. the robot has multiple "links" or rings of inflatable blubbers and a mechanical spring core. each blubber can inflate or deflate individually making the robot able to twist and turn. one robot can crawl in various \u00a0diameters of pipes and could possibly be scaled up or down.\u00a0crawling forward is achieved by a specific sequence of inflation that mimics the caterpillar's crawl in nature. although the original design for a whole robot was eventually neglected\u00a0there was an interesting twist to\u00a0that tail in the process….<\/p>\n