An SMA Inchworm-Imitated Robot for Confined Space Inspection

Abstract

Machines with complicated inner structures are dominating daily life with its diverse functions and high integration. With the increasing disassembling-assembling difficulty, the in-situ inspection and repairing have become important to low down the cost. This paper provided a simplified Ni-Ti shape memory alloy (SMA) based inchworm-imitated robot, aiming to perform the inspection task in narrow/confined spaces. The experiment showed that the robot marching speed reaches 0.57 mm/s under control of 1.5 A current with a voltage of 7 V. The maximum climbing angle on the metal sheet is 6° and the robot could also walk on the board paper, wood, and painted grounds after adding counterweight. The inchworm-imitated robot shows potential for micro-robot walking inside the confined space to perform the in-situ inspection. This gives the possibility of reducing the inner-structure complexity by decreasing the inspection holes, which leads to better utilization and lower sealing difficulty.