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The purpose of this paper is to develop a novel autonomous in‐pipe robot to perform the preventive point reparation for long‐distance offshore oil pipelines.

The autonomous in‐pipe robot performs online ultrasonic inspection for pipe wall thickness, and the original inspection data are stored in large capacity hard disk. Through the offline data analysis by the data analysts and the software tool, the pipeline health status is known. If server defects lie there, the in‐pipe robot is introduced into the pipeline once more to indicate the defect's location to the maintenance ship.

The laboratory tests and the field tests prove the feasibility and validity of the developed autonomous in‐pipe robot. Furthermore, the application of intelligent control techniques ensures the mission completion by the autonomous in‐pipe robot, which worked in the awful pipeline environment.

The developed autonomous in‐pipe robot helps eliminate lost production costs and pipeline downtime caused by leakages and guarantees the safe run of offshore oil pipelines.

For the application of the autonomous in‐pipe robot, there are no special requirements for maintained pipelines themselves, so it is applicable to the point reparation for most long‐distance welded offshore pipelines.

The purpose of this paper is to present and implement an algorithm to prioritize welding quality deterioration factors for improving welding personnel performance. A case study is carried out in a piping components fabrication process which supplies these components to oil and gas production and processing facilities on the Norwegian continental shelf (NCS).

The quality deterioration factors' prioritization is carried out using statistical methods in conjunction with the data recorded in the welding inspection database (WIDB) of the case study company. Data cleaning and rearrangements were performed to reflect final objective. Based on the welding procedure specifications (WPSs) and quality imperfection groups classified in NS‐EN ISO 6520‐1, the analysis is performed to prioritize the welding quality deterioration factors.

Based on the WPSs and quality imperfection groups classified in NS‐EN ISO 6520‐1, it is possible to prioritize the welding quality deterioration factors. These factors are possible to use for improving the performance of welding personnel to assure the quality of welds in steel fabrications.

The factors prioritized are possible to use for improving the performance of welding personnel to assure the quality and reliability of welds in a steel fabrication.

Assuring quality as proposed in the manuscript, the catastrophic failures that are potential in production and process plants can be mitigated. This enhances health, safety and environmental performance of welds in steel fabrications.

The value of this paper is to illustrate an innovative approach to a real life quality problem; it demonstrates how the application of qualitative and quantitative quality instruments in accordance with technical specification can help in increasing and maintaining product compliance and in optimizing the management of resources.

The membrane wall is one of the most important components in the boiler industry and numerous studs are welded on its surface. The membrane wall welding still remains a sector intensive in the manual and arduous works. This paper aims to propose a dual-robot system to automatically weld studs on the membrane wall.

In this paper, the authors proposed a dual-robot stud welding system for membrane walls. First, the membrane wall is divided into several zones and the welding paths are planned. Then, the pose of the pipes is calculated based on the data measured by light section sensors. The planned paths are compensated by the pose. Finally, the robots weld studs based on the compensated paths.

The method effectively eliminates manufacturing errors and welding distortions. The system can weld straight type and L-type membrane walls with high efficiency, high quality and high accuracy.

The system can weld straight type and L-type membrane walls with high efficiency and high quality. Experiments were performed in a factory to demonstrate the practicability of the method. The dual-robot system with two welding machines has approximately twice the efficiency of the manual welder with only one welding machine. The quality and accuracy of robot welding systems are higher than that of manual welding.

The paper describes a pipe repair conducted in August 2004 using two types of snake‐arm robot. The pipe was located 5 m below the reactor core of Ringhals 1 nuclear reactor.

The two types of robot worked co‐operatively to replace a section of critical pipe. The 23‐degree of freedom arm snaked around obstructing pipes to positions cameras in a humanly unreachable location in order to give the ideal view of the work site. The more substantial second arm used 13 degrees of freedom to deliver fixtures, cutting tools, gas shields, inspection equipment and also conducted both tack welding and continuous welding.

The leaking pipe was repaired manually during the 2004 outage. The robots successfully completed the externally assessed Factory Acceptance Tests which involved copying the complete procedure on a purpose built mock‐up. The robots are now on standby for 2005 and beyond.

The successful completion of this extremely difficult task indicates that snake‐arm robots are now a viable solution to a variety of complex access tasks in all industries including aerospace, pharmaceuticals, the miltary sector and nuclear industries.

The paper describes a procedure that has never been attempted before using two completely new designs of redundant snake‐arm robot.

Damage of oil and gas long‐distance transmission pipelines caused by corrosion, stresses, geological change, and other factors can result in catastrophic failures. The purpose of this paper is to describe a mobile out‐pipe inspection robot for the pipeline inspection.

This paper adapts to the requirements of long‐distance transmission pipelines on‐site overhaul, the robot developed in this paper utilizes a local magnetic flux leakage testing method for the pipeline inspection. Detection, walking, attachment, steering, and control units are designed for the robot.

The detection apparatus of the robot plays dual roles as detection and attachment unit. So, the structure of the robot is relatively simple and it is relatively small in size and relatively light.

A prototype of the robot has been manufactured according to the design. Results of the test in lab show the robot can be used to inspect pipe.

The robot is able to scan and inspect the pipeline along the planned route automatically.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the use of snake‐arm robots to conduct inspection and repair operations within nuclear power plants. The systems that have been developed and deployed are described. Operational experience and results are provided. Inspection and repair of aging plant is increasingly important to continue to generate electricity safely from high value assets.

Snake‐arm robots are hyper‐redundant, multi‐jointed, wire rope drive manipulators that are able to snake between obstructions and gain access to areas that are inaccessible to people.

The benefits to nuclear operators arising from the deployment of snake arm robots include significant dose saving, increased quality and quantity of acquired data and the ability to enable repairs in highly confined spaces.

The two case studies are first‐of‐kind applications and indicate a direction of travel for the coming decades, both in the nuclear sector and far beyond.

THE effective use of new materials and new manufacturing techniques has always played a key role in the design philosophies of the aerospace industry. Expensive though this is, it is part of the price which must be paid if we are to maintain our place in the forefront of technological achievement. The range of activities is extremely wide and covers casting techniques, new metals and alloys, composite materials, new methods of forming and processing materials, new methods of joining both by bonding and welding and new methods of evaluating the resultant products.

Describes some of the papers presented at an international colloquium on autonomous mobile systems held to celebrate 10 years of the Fraunhofer Institute for Factory Operation and Automation (IFF) in Magdeburg, Germany. Following definition of a mobile robot, papers on wheeled and biped robot platforms are discussed. These are followed by a review of some of the applications using dedicated robot systems, including an autonomous welding cell, a concept for process plant maintenance, a pipe inspection robot and systems for cleaning glass facades on high buildings. The latter work at IFF has resulted in two commercial systems, one already installed for the 1997 Leipzig Trade Fair and the other to be installed at the new Fraunhofer Foundation building in Munich in 2003.