Bio-inspired robots for confined space industrial applications: a novel cable-driven snake robot design.

Industrial automation has played a pivotal role towards improvement of productivity, efficiency, working conditions, ergonomics and reduction of health hazards. While a large portion of industrial sectors and processes have or can be automated, certain domains serve as unexplored ground due to the complexity of the processes to be executed, size and material properties of the parts of interest and available space, which highlight the need for new automation technology. In this paper, a systematic classification of product complexity and common industrial processes versus the use of conventional and bio-inspired robots is presented, aiming to identify the benefits of bio-inspired robots over their conventional competitors. Moreover, a novel cable-driven snake robot design is presented, featuring a modular lightweight structure of several segments, each of them controlled by a 3-cable mechanism, providing them 2 degrees of freedom. It exhibits significant potential to demonstrate high levels of versatility in navigating inside intricate, confined environments and narrow passages, such as aircraft fuel tanks, enabling automation of unhealthy processes that traditionally require human intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]