A robot for welding inspection in offshore mooring chains

Abstract

In this paper, the authors present the CIRUS robot. This automatic system uses a combination of pulse-echo and pitch and catch ultrasonic strategies for the inspection of the welded area of mooring chain links in an automatic way. The robot is divided in three parts: global position-ing subsystem, local positioning subsystem and inspection subsystem. Additionally, a data acquisition subsystem processes the results of the verification and produces a report for the inspector allowing the traceability of the product for assuring the welding quality.