Development of a Decision Making Guide for Locomotion Design for In-pipe Inspection Robots - One Step towards Open Innovation in Robotics

From the beginning of development of the pipeline inspection robots, different drive mechanisms have been proposed for distinctive purposes and specifications. Due to sensitive environment of oil pipelines and restrictions of innovations in petroleum industry in general, designing propelling system for robots are quiet cost-intensive and hard. In most cases, such innovations end up reinventing existing systems and approaches. Therefore, guidelines of innovation in petroleum industry should begin to develop and an open innovation platform for oil industry should begin to be built. This paper intends to define the main points and variables of in-pipe inspection locomotion and build guidelines for decision making tool to help developers to define needs and requirements to design drive mechanisms for distinctive requisitions that fulfill predefined requirements and specifications of robotic developments. This work intends to take a novel approach of guideline formation of Pipeline Robotics for the sake of cost saving in robotics. This guidelines is the beginning of definition of a whole decision making tool for In-Pipe Inspection robot's drive systems designs and developments.