The 2022 China Innovation Design Week and China “Good Design” Award Conference were held in Wuxi, and “Marine steel pile underwater inspection robot” from HEU won the gold medal. This project was designed by the National Key Laboratory of Underwater Robot Technology of Harbin Engineering University.

Offshore platforms, such as marine jackets and wind turbine tower piles, mostly adopt a steel structure. However, the quality of steel pipe butt and intersecting weld is a crucial link in the structural integrity for offshore platforms. Due to the long-term effects of wind, storms, waves, current, various alternating loads, and seawater corrosion, destructive cracks can form in the structure, which seriously reduces the integrity of the underwater structure of the offshore platform. Therefore, in order to avoid structural failure, periodic weld inspections are required to detect potential safety hazards in advance.

In response to the above requirements, the team developed a bold innovation in the design of the marine steel pile underwater detection robot: a variable magnetic adsorption device was designed to increase the stability of the robot’ movement.