Project: Tube Crawler

thingiverse

I occasionally need to inspect long underground drainage culverts, so I decided to build my own robot instead of purchasing a costly one. This robot is designed to utilize off-the-shelf components such as RC truck axles and gearboxes, motors, and other readily available robotics parts. It will eventually have a blue robotics pressure hull on top. This rover is a tethered vehicle that primarily moves up and down dry or submerged tunnels in a straight line forward and backward. It will later have an RC surface running mode. The design can easily be adapted for wheel steering if needed. As currently configured, I expect it to fit into 8" or 10" culverts. This project is temporarily on hold pending a few things, but I'll return to it soon. The next piece will be better seals for the motor arms, followed by the front camera/light assembly and housing clamps for the pressure housing. The rear will have a tether attachment point for my existing ROV tether. Parts lists, build components, and better pictures will be posted later. The RC parts are mainly Traxxis RC components and differential parts. At slow speeds, I don't anticipate gearing issues. The two rear motors feature position encoders. I haven't decided on the robotics platform yet. The following parts still need to be created: front and rear swaybar anchors (which fit in the area with the two brass heat-set inserts for and aft), pressure hull mounts, light brackets, the rear tether mount, possibly mud fenders later. Version 3 of the motor arms will have an integral gasket.