Underground sewer pipelines need maintenance from sources of damage, such as unstable ground support. To mitigate this the TISCALI project (Technology Innovation for Sewer Condition Assessment using Long-distance Information-systems) is creating an impactor sensor to look for early warning signs of collapse.
We designed a 4 joint arm to place the impactor at a specific position and orientation in relation to the sewer wall. Then, we developed a control system for the arm to place the impactor while avoiding collision with the sewer wall. Finally, different systems were explored to mitigate recoil from the impactor, and we chose a non-backdrivable gear system.
The arm can place the impactor in various pipe sizes and avoid collision with the sewer wall by using a path generation algorithm. Finally, recoil is limited to 0.2mm via the non-backdrivable gear system.