Driving system design of inspection robot for mine belt conveyor

The current research on mine belt conveyor inspection robots mainly focuses on the fault identification and diagnosis of belt conveyor inspection robots, while there are few researches the movement of inspection robots. There are large amount of equipment in roadways of coal mines, the working space is narrow and the terrain is complicated. Therefore, when the inspection robot moves, it will encounter extreme road conditions such as climbing slope and coal mud obstacles. In the context of the long inspection distance of the mine belt conveyor, the relatively single inspection target and fixed inspection route, the rail type driving system is adopted as the walking mode of the inspection robot. However, when the rail surface is covered by the coal mud, the driving wheels will be stuck. Moreover, when facing the rail with a large slope, the robot may skid. Therefore, a four-wheel support and two-wheel drive rail type driving system is designed. The inspection robot moves forward by the friction between the driving wheels and the rail, while the support wheels carrying the quality of the inspection robot and playing the role of walking assistance. The finite element simulation analysis is carried out on the main parts of the inspection robot driving system, which are the driving shaft and the swing arm. The ultimate stresses of the driving shaft and the swing arm are 83.2 MPa and 65.8 MPa respectively, which are much lower than the yield strength of the material, ensuring the performance reliability of the inspection robot. The climbing and coal mud obstacles crossing performance of the inspection robot driving system is tested. The results show that the inspection robot can still complete acceleration on the 25° slope rail, and runs smoothly during up and down slopes. There is no skidding and jamming when running on the coal mud obstacle rail.