Development of self-powered in-pipe robot : power regeneration system

• Main Author: Tim Brandon, Anak Sawing
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) 2017
• Subjects: T Technology (General); TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/25671/3/Tim%20Brandon.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/25671/

In-pipe robot (IPR) needs continuous and constant power supply during operation within limited power source available. This research is a continuation from IPR: D200 for cleaning operation. Objective of this research is to develop an efficient power regeneration system for IPR. The concept is to re-use kinetic energy from high speed rotation of the IPR cleaning device to be converted into electrical energy which is used to recharge the main battery. Two type of circuits have been developed namely unregulated charging circuit and regulated charging circuit. Both developed circuits are simulate using Livewire software. The developed circuits are then validated using experiment to measure the output voltage. Simulations done were focused on the output voltage produced by two different circuits and the results show the unregulated charging circuit can produce output voltage of 10.90V while regulated charging circuit produce output voltage of 5.47V. Experiments have confirmed that unregulated charging is able to produce higher voltage of 6.93V but is inconsistent as compared to regulated charging circuit with consistent output of 5.00V. The experiment results are lower than simulation results due to power loss during power transmission of the actual circuits. In the meantime, the unregulated charging circuit produced inconsistent output as compared to the regulated charging circuit. Therefore, the regulated charging circuit will be considered for the IPR: D200 applications as well as other similar applications.