Research status and prospects of inspection robot for petrochemical storage tank areas
Large storage tanks are important facilities for ensuring oil reserves and national energy security.Due to the long-term service in harsh environment,storage tanks have a high risk of various safety hazards.To ensure the long-term safe operation of storage tanks,multi-directional,high-frequency,dynamic,digital inspections,detection analysis and early warnings are essen-tial.At present,traditional manual inspection modes can no longer meet the requirements of modern industrial development.In contrast,the intelligent,flexible,comprehensive and real-time inspection robots can provide feasible solutions for the innovation of traditional inspection modes.The paper summarizes the research status of inspection robots in petrochemical industry from four aspects of robot designing,path planning,navigation positioning and data processing.In response to the technological limitations faced by current petrochemical inspection robots,key technological research directions for the future have been discussed.