Design and analysis of cleaning mechanism for an intermittent screw-driven pipeline robot

For achieving the compact size and large traction force of cleaning robots, this paper presents an intermittent-cleaning robot based on the screw-driven mechanism. The robot has two working modes: Linear reciprocating cleaning (LRC) mode and Spiral reciprocating cleaning (SRC) mode. The working principle, kinematic analysis, traction and driving force calculations for both working modes, were obtained and compared. Furthermore, in order to ensure the working stability, the failure mode analysis was performed. Simulation and experiments were conducted to verify the proposed robotic mechanism. The results show that the proposed intermittent-cleaning robots can effectively complete the cleaning work of the pipeline.