Design and Path Planning Research of Heating Pipeline Defect Inspection Robot
To address safety hazards caused by aging urban heating pipelines, this paper develops a heating pipeline inspection robot system. The design employs a purely mechanical cam-rocker mechanism, overcoming the temperature limitations of conventional actuators and enabling adaptive coverage for pipe diameters ranging from DN800 to DN1200. In terms of path planning, an improved A*-ant colony hybrid algorithm incorporating variable-diameter constraints (VD-A*-ACO) is proposed. By integrating multidimensional constraints such as turning cost, obstacle risk, and inspection efficiency, the algorithm enhances navigation performance in complex environments. MATLAB simulation results demonstrate that the robot's mechanical structure exhibits strong adaptability, while the improved algorithm reduces path length to 13.8995 in complex scenarios, lowers total cost by approximately 29.6%, and decreases diameter adjustment requirements by 50.0%, effectively validating the engineering value of synergistic optimization between structural adaptability and path planning.