A Steerable-Needle Inspired Mechanism for Inspecting Extremely Confined Spaces

Abstract

We present a novel, compliant mechanism that provides the capability to navigate extremely confined spaces for the purpose of infrastructure inspection. Extremely confined spaces are commonly encountered during infrastructure inspection. These spaces can include pipes and ventilation ducts. Often these infrastructure features go uninspected simply because there is no viable way to access their interior. In addition, it is not uncommon for extremely confined spaces to be laid-out in a maze-like fashion that must be selectively navigated in order to execute an inspection. In this work this problem is addressed by taking inspiration from the field of steerable needles. Steerable needles are typically made from super-elastic nitinol. This material has the property that it can experience high strain without yielding. This property makes superelastic nitnol an attractive material for navigating a tube through a maze-like arrangement of extremely confined spaces