Proceedings of2013IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics nd Automation

August 4 - 7, Tkamatsu, Japn

A Review of Robotics In Onshore Oil-Gas Industry Amit Shla and Hamad Karki

Deparment of Mechanical Engineering he Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE

{ashukla, hkarki}@pi.ac.ae

Abstract- With shrinking resources and increasing demand for petroleum products, oil and gas industries are forced to rethink over their present pace for automatization of industry. New oil ields, mostly located in extreme conditions, are posing serious challenges to both human and environment in terms of safety. Tasks which are repeated, dirty, and dangerous and require high degree of accuracy are already automatized in manufacturing industry. This success has inspired oil and gas industry to lend some of its highly dangerous and repetitive tasks for automation. Most of the processes are remotely operated, and require highly skilled operator. Such processes beneits not only in terms of overall health and safety, by removing humans from hazardous environment, but also by reduction of number staf members required for continuous inspection and manipulation of plant facilities. Considering the sensitivity of inlammable products involved in this industry usage of completely autonomous robots is still a far fetch choice. Therefore, semi-autonomous robots are excellent choice for this industry at-least as near future solution. In oil and gas industry, robots are used both in upstream and downstream process such as pipe handling in drilling operations, pipe inspection , tank inspection, and remote controlled underwater vehicles (ROVs). This paper presents the state of art technology particularly related to application of robotic solutions to in-pipe inspection robots (lPIRs) and tank inspection robots (TIRs) at onshore oil and gas facilities.

I. INTRODUCTION Global demand for oil and gas, is increasing with increasing

indusrial growth and will remain high in foreseeable uture. With ever increasing consumption, at present it is 142 Mboe/d (million barrels of oil equivalent per day), easy resources of peroleum products are shrinking very fast, and remaining oil and gas ields are characterized by such adjectives as arctic, deep-water, cold, heavy, high in water content, high sulur content, to name but a few [1]. Increased production demand and diicult oil ields have not only increased the cost of production, but also compounded the risks related to human security and environmental safety. Recent ragic events such as the Deep Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico [2] has caught attention of not only govements and environmentalists but also of all the major players rom the peroleum indusry for necessity of safer exploration of oil and gas [3]. The process of protecting the environment rom oil spill, by running damage conrol and cleanup operations and setting up the unds for compensating victims of ragedy, has costed almost US$20 billion to BP [4]. In the wake of several terrible oil spill crisis, European Commission has unded several research projects with main objective of developing innovative intelligent robot technologies for oil spill management [5], [6]. Growing challenges within indusry, such

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as lower recovery rate, exploration of unconventional reserves and operation in exreme environmental conditions, has put need for raising the level of automation high on the agenda [7]. There are several critical parameters for operation of oil and gas indusries such as safety of human lives, environmental concen, cost eiciency, optimization of proitability of business model and increased production. Srategies for successul handling of above mentioned challenges, call for new radical innovations such as intelligent drilling rigs, smart inspection and manipulation, and automated operations for production. For example a Norwegian company named Robotic Drilling Systems, has signed a joint research program with NASA to develop technology for intelligent drilling [3]. ABB has also developed a robotics-based remote automation system prototype, capable of performing inspection and maintenance of an oil and gas process module [7]. Though most of the robotic technology in oil and gas indusry is still used in a manner of operation assistant in the process of inspection, manipulation and rescue missions.

II. ROBOTICS IN ONSHORE CONDITIONS Oil and gas indusry has extensive usage of all kinds of

pipes and storage tanks during diferent stages of business starting rom exploration, exraction, ransportation, processing and disribution. P ipes and storage tanks need regular inspection and maintenance especially those continuously used for long distance ransportation and long term storage. Humanly inspecting these components are expensive and hazardous, so automated inspection and manipulation for these components are very much desired. Most of the robotic research, for oil and gas indusry, has been dedicated to developing in-pipe inspection robots (IPIRs) and tanks inspection robots (TIRs).

A. Pipe inspection At onshore peroleum plants, pipes are used as a tool for

ransportation of oil, gas and other luids, rom production sites to disribution sites. These pipes are mostly laid down under water or underground environment. In such environments pipes are subjected to exreme weather conditions such as hot, cold, humidity and dust. These unfavorable conditions lead to many roubles in pipes such as corrosion, erosion, deposition, cracks, thermal cycling, pitting, shock loading and joint-failure etc. [8]. Any kind of leakage of peroleum products rom pipes not only causes loss of revenue but also invites ecological disaster. Therefore, regular inspection and maintenance of ransportation pipes are srongly demanded for safe operation. Traditional

way of digging and manually detecting the temporal position of these laws for underground pipes are not only inconvenient but also expensive. IPIRs equipped with nondesructive testing (NDT) of these laws holds the key for uture development in this ield [9]. These IPIRs are inserted in the pipe rom a inlet point and ravel inside the pipe under extenal supervision. There are various causes and kinds of laws, and for them there are appropriate inspection techniques, such as visual inspection (HD pan-tilt-zoom cameras), X-ray, eddy currents, acoustics and ulrasonics. Most of the IPIRs are teleoperated and connected by tethered cable to the operator [10], [11]. There are ive essential parameters to categorize IPIR:

1) Shape and size of robots: There are pipes of various shapes (sraight line, elbow-shape and T-shape etc.) and sizes (diferent radii) involved in the oil and gas indusries according to usage and low conditions. Therefore, shape and size of pipes are one of the major parameter to afect the design of IPIR for example micro-robots [12]-[18] are required for smaller size pipes. There are mainly two tpe of mechanism for adaptation of varying radii of the pipes namely active linkage type and passive linkage type [19]. In active linkage type, separate actuators are installed to apply normal force to generate required raction power [20]. Therefore, this mechanism requires more space and expensive rom manufacturing point of view. Whereas, passive linkage mechanism is designed merely with elastic components such as spring. This arrangement leads to simplicity of conrol mechanism and inexpensive manufacturing of robot. Inspection robots described in [21][24] have used simple spring on the main axis of robot.

2) Steering mechanism: Most of the robots are designed to pass through horizontal pipe sructures but urban gas pipe lines have complicated sructures due to complex disribution networks. Therefore, successul navigation through these ransportation pipes requires in-pipe robots to steer through complex shapes such as vertical, elbow and branched. There are mainly two categories of steering mechanism irstly articulated type and secondly diferential tpe. Articulated steering is a mechanism which allows a robot to take n in resricted space around a pivot located on the robot body by splitting the total body of the robot in ront half and back hal. This kind of steering mechanism is directly inspired by movement of the snake and the annelid animal in nature. There are several kinds of articulated steering mechanisms depending on how steering is activated around the pivot point such as steering joint [25]-[27], double active universal joint [28], [29], and rubber gas actuated joint [30]. There are several successul IPIRs based on the diferential steering mechanism as well [31]-[37]. Diferential drive is a mechanism which allows ning of the vehicle by modulating the speeds of the wheels depending on the desired direction for ning [31], [33]. Since, inside the pipe raction surface is 3-D curved rather than planer, hence it requires sophisticated speed conrol mechanism to avoid slippings of wheels inside the pipe [24]. These requirements for knowledge of the pipe geomery and locus of contact points makes this mechanism complicated

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problem of conrol. 3) Propelling mechanism: Every IPIR must have some

propelling mechanism to navigate inside the pipe apart rom steering mechanism. There are many diferent kinds of navigation technologies used by in-pipe robots depending on the requirements of the operations such as P ig tpe [38], [39], Wheel tpe [11], [14], [21], [24], [28], [29], [31], [33], [40][48], Snake tpe [49]-[52], Legged mobile tpe or Walking type [53]-[56], Catepillar tpe [8], [19], [57], Wall-press type [28], [43], [57], Inch-worm tpe [12], [13], [15], [16], [30], [58]-[68], and Screw tpe [12], [63], [64], [69], [70] etc. Most of the published research works about IPIRs are concened with in-pipe navigation of robots because with increasing complexity of the pipes, navigation becomes challenging task.

The pig type robot is collection of capsule tpe metallic body, rubber disk for support rom pipe walls, ulra-sonic ransducers for detection, and odometer for distance calculations. Rubber disk not only get support rom the wall but also blocks the in-pipe luid to get passively driven by it [38]. Drawback of this mechanism is that, robot keep on rotating around its cenral axis. P assively driven in-pipe robots perform poor on various occasions such as when luid pressure inside pipes are low and ransportation pipes have complex shapes (Branched and vertical). Wheel tpe IPIRs are proposed to overcome these shortcomings [21]. Wheel based robots have many advantages such as easy speed, direction conrol and higher energy eiciency but sufer rom complex steering mechanism and instability during navigation. To overcome this instability, springs are used to press the in-pipe walls against wheels of the robot [43]. This pressing of walls gives exra riction force for better slip-less operation and adaptability of robot to diferent sizes of ransportation pipes. [28] describes a mechanism in which legs of the robot, which contain wheels, are sretched and conracted radially to generate wall pressure. This pressure gives all the above mentioned beneits and saves body of robot rom distortion forces when it crosses over obstacles such as steps, reducers, prorusions inside the pipes. It can be observed that most of these wheel based inspection robots generate raction power by pressing the pipe wall passively or actively. These wheel based robots get stuck inside the pipe when there are shap comers, steps, sudden big change in pipe cross-section and variable surface roughness. As a altenative to wheel based locomotion, legged type robots have been proposed in [53]. The higher lexibility of legs, improves the performance of robot crossing the obstacles and ning around joints and comers [56].

Design of IPIRs for the inspection of pipes of small diameters by using wheel based locomotion mechanism is really a challenge. Wheel based robots require heavy motors and gear systems, and usage of other kind of actuators such as piezoactuators sufer rom lower raction forces [69]. Therefore, two locomotion mechanisms ree rom elecrical machines are proposed irstly inch-worm tpe robots and secondly screw tpe robots, for inspection of small diameter pipes. Earth worm is a creature which moves forward by swelling its bodily

rings and then propagating it in forward direction [12]. This locomotion mechanism has inspired researchers to design inchworm robots, which do not require bulky and costly elecrical motors and wheels. Apart rom being cheaper and lighter in weight absence of elecrical machines makes inch-worm robots safer and suitable for working in explosion risk areas [66]. These robots have lexible sructure which is divided mainly in three parts bacward clamp, middle part and forward clamp. First bacward part expand radially to generate support rom the wall, while middle part get elongated longitudinally to move forward and then bacward clamp get conracted and forward clamp get expanded radially to generate support [15], [68]. However, many of these inch-worm robots, such as [30], [66], were not efective because of their low speed and poor reliability. Screw-type robots can reely move bacward and forward, inside the pipe of smaller diameter, based on the principle of screw. [69] has proposed a robot which has two units, separated by a micro elecromagnetic motor, and one unit is ixed to rotating shat and another to casing. This arrangement forces shat and casing to rotate in opposite direction so that robot moves forward. This kind of robot is mainly used for precise motion inside smaller diameter pipes with very low payload and unsuitable for complex pipe sructures. Flexibility of the robot body is a key factor for its ability to pass through complex shapes of pipes. Many robots using lexibility of snake kind body has been proposed in literature [49], [50]. The snake type robots are designed by serial interconnection of many identical modules on both sides with rotational joints. Robot can move horizontally much like normal wheel based motion. Whereas, vertical motion is achieved by using lexibility of pushing interconnected joints against the two opposing side of the pipe at the same time, while moving upward by forward motion of wheels [50]. Since, snake-like robots use a number of active joints or modules; thus, their development cost is expensive and they need more energy for operation [19].

4) Detection technoloy: These in-pipe robots are equipped with various sensory devices each related to speciic kind of job. Visual cameras such as CCD [9], [16], [21], [24], [28], [29], [31], [41], [43], [45]-[47], [63], [65], [67], micro CCD [14], [65], CMOS [48] and micro CMOS [71] cameras are used for the pupose of navigation and inspection. CMOS cameras require lesser components than CCD, which makes them comparatively more energy eicient and cheaper than CCD. Since, CCD cameras generally tend to have higher resolution than CMOS, therefore choice of camera requires rade-of between cost and clarity of image. Most of the commercially available CCD cameras are very big and cannot be directly installed on the micro-robots. Therefore, [14], [65] have developed their own speciic micro CCD cameras suitable for inspection of small diameter pipes. Micro CCD camera developed in [14] carries 41K color pixels and with this resolution it can locate micro cracks of 251 in the intenal surface of the pipe.

One of the major problems for the pipes in oil and gas

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indusry is corrosion due to unwanted elecro-chemical reactions. Role of NDT becomes critical to detect early stages of corrosion so that corrective measures can be taken before severe damage takes place. Early stages of corrosion are not directly visible or detectable by ordinary surface measurement techniques. However, early detection of corrosion is possible by estimation of shirking pipe wall thickness and sructural discontinuities. At present there are serval advance techniques available for corrosion detection such as X-Ray, ulrasonic [38], [44], [72]-[78], Eddy current [58], [60], [63], [65], [79][81],and magnetic lux leakage (MFL) [72], [82]-[87]. X-ray based detection techniques enjoy edge over other NDT of its being capable of pictorial representation. There are many other advantages of X-ray NDT such as ability to identiy material, estimating material density, and capable of inspecting almost all kinds of materials, but sufers rom requirement of skilled analyzer, expensive, inability to detect closed cracks and above of all safety concens related to its operation [88].

When magnetic ield is applied to the intenal wall of the pipe uneven surface of corrosion afected wall distorts the resulting magnetic ield. These distortions in magnetic ield are measured by magnetic sensors but overall measurement result is only qualitative in nature. This magnetic lux leakage (MFL) technique is only suitable for small pipes, and sometimes when pipe materials have impurities results of MFL are spurious in nature [78]. There are two kinds of MLF techniques irstly circumferential and secondly axial. Circumferential MLF is more popular and efective than axial one [85]. MLF technique is sensitive to pipe material under inspection whereas ulrasonic is ree rom this law and more accurate in predictions [84]. In ulrasonic detection method, high requency acoustic waves are ransmitted rom ransducers, which are relected by intenal and extenal surfaces of the pipe. Calculations over relected and reracted-relected waves allows estimation of extenal and intenal corrosion [38]. Ulrasonic detection technique has many advantages such as high peneration depth, high accuracy, high sensitivity, rapid testing, portable, safe and inally it can test all kinds of materials and their properties, but sufer rom expensive raining for expert operator, necessity of contact of ransducer with surface of material and inability to detect crack along the line of wave ravel [88].

Quantitative variation of impendence probe of coil due to eddy current on pipe surface leads to detection of crack in the pipe [89]. Remote ield eddy current (RFEC) based NDT is another variation of above mentioned conventional eddy current testing (ECT) technique [9], [90], [91]. Most of the corrosion detection techniques fails at very high temperature, such as 175C inside deeper core of the earth, So [92] has proposed a new DC elecromagnetic induction using ECT method. ECT techniques are sensitive to large number of parameters related to magnetic conductivity, permeability, and geomery. It has many other advantages such as wider temperature range for operation, smaller sizes for probes to be utilized for smaller diameter pipes, light weight and portable to be installed on micro robots, and relatively lower in cost,

but sufer rom litof efect and its inability to be used for non-metal pipes [88]. Ulrasonic NDT is more sensitive and has better spatial resolution than ECT, whereas later is more suitable for inspection of multilayered sructures [93], [94].

Apart rom defect inspection, IPIRs are equipped with many other kind of sensors for diferent puposes, such as gravitational sensor [29], temperature sensor, humidity sensors and tactile sensors [42], [53], [95] to successully navigate through geomeries like elbow and branch. Tactile sensors detect these geomeries of the pipes by the virtue of estimating the forces upon contact with the hard surfaces [42]. Researchers in [96] have used laser projection technique to identiy the special geomeries of the pipe which helps them in localization of the autonomous robot and in [97] laser sensors are utilized for the pose estimation of robot inside the pipe.

5) Conrol mechanism: Most of the IPIRs are conrolled and powered by tethered cable or umbilical cord connected between operator system and in-pipe robots [11]. Tethered cables are composed of power cable and optical iber wires for the pupose of video communication and data ransmission [28]. These tethered cables serve many puposes such as [8]:

Supplying power to the various devices installed on the robot such as locomotive motors, video cameras, lighting, defect detection and other kinds of sensors, in the form of ACIDC, pneumatic or hydraulic power.

Conrol signals to navigation (wheels and legs), manipulation (manipulators installed on robots for the pupose of welding, cutting and drilling) and inspection mechanisms (defect detection sensors and pan, tilt and zoom of camera) of the robot.

Used as a safety rope to pull out the robot rom pipe or inspection site in situation of accidental power loss or completion of inspection task [98].

The biggest drawback of using tethered cable with IPIR lies in continuously increasing riction force with increasingly raveled distance by robot inside the pipe [44], [46], [98]. In such situations slip-less ravel of IPIRs require more and more raction force [11], [46] with higher and higher demand of kinetic energy. All round 360 degree inspection in circular pipes lead to twisting of tether cable which may at the end damage the cable itself [99]. Along with all these limitations, total distance ravelled by in-pipe robots are physically resricted with the usage of tether cable [44], [59], [98].

Freedom rom inconvenient tether cable is the biggest impetus for using wireless technology for inspection robots. There have been various un-tethered and wireless inspection robots proposed in literature to overcome problems related to conventionally tether cable conrolled inspection robots [10], [12], [16], [27], [36], [37], [44], [63], [65], [100]-[102]. Tether less robots can be picked up rom their exit point itself in the pipe rather than coming back to the base point for their collection. All the wireless inspection robots carry, pack of rechargeable batteries for on-board power supply and communication system with higher bandwidth for data ransmission [98]. For micro robots, where space is already a consraint

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and usage of heavy inspection devices such as camera [99] and thick hard wire will urther limit its mobility inside the pipe [12], [16]. Therefore, [63], [65], [99] have proposed micro robots with compact and wireless energy supply, communication, and navigation mechanism. The biggest drawback of wireless technology comes rom their inability to penerate metallic pipes due to high elecrical conductivity of materials such as steel [103]. To make wireless technology even to work for metallic pipelines, problem of elecromagnetic shielding has to be solved irst. And for this pupose [36] has proposed an emitter with exremely low requency of Elecromagnetic wave, which can pass through metallic wall as well.

Overall conrol architecture of the inspection robots highly depends on their degrees of autonomy and it can be of three kinds such as manually operated, semi-autonomous and ullyautonomous [104], [105]. Visual feedback rom the remote location to the operator and in ren command signal rom the operator to the machine completes the loop in manual remote conrol process [106]. Sensors and manipulators installed on remote device (or site) works as eyes, ears and hands of operator at operation site. This kind of automation requires well rained person, who has to manually operate every single step of the process such as safe navigation of the remote device, switch-on and of of the inspection sensors, and manipulation operation etc. [106], [107]. Mostly all the commercially available inspection robots belong to this category [100]. In semi-autonomous robots, in principal operator has to deine only initial and inal conditions of the operations. Sensory data received by robot is intepreted either locally by processor installed on the robot or by computer at operator side [100]. Overall in this process, role of the operator is greatly reduced by inclusion of intelligent navigation and collision avoidance techniques [98]. In ully automated operations, robotic devices can be preprogrammed for complete operation and there is no need of human interventions at all especially during the operation [101], [106]. Given, the sensitive nature of products and environments in oil and gas indusry, it requires continuous human supervision, therefore it still prefers semi-autonomous human conrolled robots such as [108]-[ 111].

There are some ully autonomous IPIRs rom other indusries to inspire oil and gas indusry. Such as ANTARO [112] and MAKRO [101] are two ully-autonomous, module based, un-tethered and self-steering IPIRs designed for inspection of sewer pipes. But these IPIR are only suitable for navigation in sraight pipelines or at-max in curved pipe. These IPIRs sufer rom wheel slip error and are unable to climb in vertical sections of pipelines. [57] has presented ully autonomous IPIR, named FAMP ER, with excellent mobility, by which it can navigate through any spatial conditions of the pipeline (horizontal and vertical both) having complex geomeries (Tbranches, Y-branches, and L-joints) using its catepillars and extendable link system. The biggest push for development of completely independent IPIR stems rom the fact that general wireless communication is not possible for most of the metallic pipes and wired communication is severely limiting

the mobility and navigation of robot inside the pipe. With these reasons in mind [96] has proposed autonomous navigation inside pipelines with the help of laser based landmark detection technique. For autonomous inspection robots, all the inspection data has to be stored locally which can be analyzed later on ater exit of robot rom the pipeline. Apart rom local data storage, autonomous robots must possess some local intelligence as well for the pupose of navigation [33] and defect detection [103]. For example, [44] contains crawler unit, drive unit, conroller unit, battery unit and ulrasonic inspect unit, all installed locally on the robot itsel. In this IPIR, drive conrol system receives motion command rom cenral conroller via CAN bus, with no need of human operator.

Navigation conrol, speciically steering through elbow and branches, is one of the most important conrol aspect of all the IPIR described in literature. For example [24] has proposed a sophisticated conrol algorithm for steering of IPIR rom various complex geomeries of pipe based on modulation of wheel speeds. In [52], researchers have developed a kinematic motion conrol srategy for passive-joint active-wheel snake robot, to coordinate between diferent modules for higher mobility and lower demand of raction force. In [113], researchers have proposed a new IPIR, called National Taiwan University (NTU) Navigator, which have a stable and smooth uzzy steering conroller for operating inside the pipes of varying diameters. Most of the IPIR research focuses on the drive conrol mechanism but ignore global planning for automatic yet comprehensive inspection of complex pipelines. Therefore, [106] has presented an eicient 3-D guarding algorithm that can cover a given complicated environment using as few as possible points. B. Tank inspection

Huge metallic tanks are used for storing the pero-chemical products both at ofshore and onshore production plants. Continuous storage of crude peroleum products inside the metallic tanks generates many corrosive by-products such as iron sulide and hydrogen sulphide. These tanks have many welded joints and these are prone to leakage due to corrosion and wear. Bubbling H2S does more damage to the roof than the bottom of the tank. Bottom of the tank is mainly damaged by collection of large quantities of sludge material containing heterorophic microorganisms. Although bottom also contains many corrosion pits created due to intenal reactions of peroproducts [114]. Since, humanly inspection of these tanks, is dangerous due to presence of H2S and such other gases, requires completely emptying the tank and stopping all the production for few weeks [115], hence, this process is lengthy, expensive and hazardous rom safety point of view. Automated inspection, while tanks are ull, with continued operation of the plant is the motivation for research for TIRs.

Main criteria of categorizing the TIR, is based on the principle of climbing the tank under inspection [116]. There are two broad categories of climbing techniques, irstly based on adhesion mechanism and secondly on the locomotion principle. The most common adhesion mechanisms are magnetism [9],

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[81], [117]-[126], vacuum suction [127]-[129], speciic attachment devices such as rails [130] or pegs and grippers/clamps [ 131 ]. The locomotion category can be urther divided in four sub-groups [123], such as wheels [9], [81], [117]-[120], racks [128], legs [121], [132] and actuator [123] based devices.

There are some outstanding tank inspection robots such as Neptune, Maverick and Scavenger. Neptune is a mobile robot designed by Robotics Institute at Canegie Mellon University [133]. This robot aims for remote inspection of above-ground tanks, while they are illed with peroleum products. Neptune is equipped with vehicle crawler to move up and inside the tak, ulrasonic sensors for detecting leakage, HD cameras for visual feedback and acoustic sensors for position locationing inside the tank etc. Neptune provides the visual records of each welded joint and thickness-contour maps for the loor of the tank using ulrasonic thickness measurement sensors [133]. Since, most of the TIRs carry almost similar kinds of equipment for the pupose of inspection as IPIRs but their main diferences come rom climbing technologies. Therefore, in broader sense discussions related to detection technologies and conrol mechanisms described in Sections II-A.4 and II-A.5 are very well applicable to the robots of TIR categories as well. There are also some novel conrol mechanisms proposed for TIRs as in [134], [135] and [136]. [134] has presented a uzzy CMAC algorithm along with neural networks to establish the racking conrol system for improving the performance of the robot navigation. In [135] a novel client/server architecture has been proposed for autonomous operation of the inspection robot. Here client program is run on the inspection root locally which is related to safe climbing and navigation of robot, whereas server program is run on operator side at conrol room. At server side, programs are concened with capturing the visual data, detection of leakage and some manipulation work. Fuel tanks installed on the ship have thin metallic walls so normally used heavy climbing robot cannot be used due to tendency of deformation of surface. A novel architecture called mother/child has been proposed in [137], to deal with such a situation. Where mother robot is normal a heavy climbing robot with high mobility used for climbing through srong rack available on the tank. And child robot, which is very light in weight, carries only required detectors for inspection. Most of these robots are at max semi-autonomous in nature but [136] presents ully autonomous TIR with wireless conrol.

III. CONCLUSION This paper summarizes the state of art robotic solutions

available for in-pipe inspection and tank inspection robots at onshore facilities of oil and gas indusry. This paper has also summarized various steering mechanisms, propulsion technologies, defect-detection techniques and conrol mechanisms for these inspection robots. Most of the commercially available robots, used for pipe inspection and tank inspection, are remotely operated machines with very little autonomy. But rends of successul implementation of reliable semi-autonomous and teleoperated robots are excellent choices as near uture solutions. Development of few completely autonomous robots,

rom other ields such as water pipe inspection, is very encouraging for uture ully automated robots for oil and gas plants.

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