Mechanical Design and Path Planning of A Robotic Arm for GIS Pipeline Inspection

In view of the requirements for detection and obstacle avoidance in GIS pipeline, a robotic arm that can be mounted on a pipeline inspection robot to complete detection task is designed. Firstly, mechanical design for the robotic arm is carried out and structural optimization is implemented. According to the simulation results, the robotic arm has a lightweight structure and good mechanical properties. Then a prototype of the robotic arm is built. Afterwards, a research for obstacle avoidance path planning of the robotic arm is conducted, in which process RRT-Connect algorithm is used. Simulation results show that the robotic arm designed can realize obstacle avoidance path planning well in GIS pipeline.