Knowledge management: Intelligent in-pipe inspection robot conceptual design for pipeline infrastructure management

Abstract

Pipeline distribution and production are primary methods of transporting oil, natural gas, chemicals, and water. However, prolonged exposure to natural weather may cause corrosion, crack, and leakage to the pipelines. Therefore, periodical inspection is considered uttermost important. As most mechanised inspection techniques (e.g., non-destructive testing) are only deal with external inspect, they cannot accurately detect significant corrosion or other of defects in the internal. In addition, the inspection tasks can only be applied manually by highly trained operators. Given these circumstances, various concepts of pipeline inspection robots are developed in recent years to enhance the whole maintenance excellence. In this chapter, a multi-agent system (MAS) approach assisted intelligent conceptual design (ICD) platform is adopted for miniature in-pipe inspection robot design synthesizing. The demo case study shows that the proposed MAS-ICD can outperform human designers in many perspectives.