Design of Inspection and Cleaning Robot

In power plants, there are several places such as vessels, surface, nozzle pipes which need to be inspected and cleaned regularly. To ensure the integrity of power plant, these various places must be periodically inspected using ultrasonic sensors and visual cameras. The surfaces and many parts of the plant should be cleaned as many times as required to prevent contaminations. Cleaning of power plants is a tedious task with high efforts regarding time and personnel costs. The advances of technologies for mobile robotics enable the application of robots to increasingly complex tasks. Robots were initially used in the automation sector to handle repetitive and simple tasks reliably, with the objective of cost reduction per product. Along with the increased speed of embedded microcontrollers, the service robotic sector has started to grow. Robots do tasks such as handling heavy radioactive loads and performing tricky repair and maintenance operation in contaminated areas. This paper investigates a robot which is guided using wireless communication by a remote location to inspect and clean various fields effectively. The robotic system is devised to reduce inspection time along with effective cleaning scheduled in places where human exposure is risky. This paper presents the design and implementation of an inspection and cleaning robot in power plants.