Aiming at the question that most of the existing pipeline robots can only move in parts of common pipeline environments, in this study, we introduce a novel pipeline robot configuration with excellent environmental adaptability and obstacle avoidance capability for inspecting a more complex pipeline system. To ensure adaptability and mobility, the pipeline robot's general configuration was divided into three parts: the head, waist, and tail, with axisymmetric and planar symmetric structural distributions. Two active articulated joints connect the three sections of the pipeline robot, driving the head and tail to complete yaw and roll motions and allowing the pipeline robot to avoid raised obstacles and broken gaps. Furthermore, the pipeline robot can travel through annular gaps, straight pipelines with different diameters, and funnel-type pipelines due to the combination of scissor mechanism legs and a caterpillar track. Finally, a pipeline robot with the configuration and test bed with six common pipeline environments was built, and the obstacle avoidance ability and environmental adaptation experiments were conducted to evaluate the movement effectiveness. According to the experimental results, the pipeline robot can navigate smoothly within a complex pipeline environment. The pipeline robot in this setup has considerable potential in the real world.

The China Space Station (CSS) modules feature many areas that are difficult to clean and thus susceptible to microbial outbreaks. A new sampling method utilizing an equivalent material sheet was applied to characterize the diversity of microbes that accumulated in inaccessible areas in orbit on the CSS. Equivalent material sheet is a membrane made of the same material as the wall of the module. Fifty samples were collected from interior surfaces (work, sleeping, and sanitary areas) of the Tianhe core module and the Wentian and Mengtian experimental modules, covering three flights by the Shenzhou (SZ)-12 to SZ-14 astronaut crews from 2021 to 2022. The numbers of culturable bacteria and fungi that accumulated during the on-orbit periods of each flight ranged from 0 to 2.83 × 109 colony-forming units/100 cm2. The number of bacteria detected by quantitative PCR (qPCR) ranged from 1.24 × 105 to 2.59 × 109 rRNA gene copies/100 cm2, with an average viability of 65.08%. A total of 103 bacterial strains and 27 fungal strains were cultured and isolated. The dominant culturable microorganisms were mainly from the genera Bacillus, Staphylococcus, Aspergillus, Cladosporium, and Penicillium. High-throughput sequencing results showed that the predominant bacteria were Pseudomonas, Stenotrophomonas, Methylobacterium-Methylorubrum, Sphingomonas, Bacillus, Staphylococcus, and Nocardiopsis. The microbial diversity in each module varied significantly with sampling time and sampling area. In the early stage of CSS construction with the SZ-12 crew, the microbial species evenness in the modules was high; later, with the SZ-13 crew, Pseudomonas began to appear as the dominant microorganism. More than half (58.80%) of the bacteria on module surfaces originated from the human skin and oral environments. Lactobacillus was present in all areas of the three modules at all sampling times. The biomarker bacteria Stenotrophomonas sp., isolated from the work area in the Tianhe core module, are typically derived from plants. SourceTracker analysis indicated that most of the microbes in the orbiting CSS came from human bodies, and that microbial diversity was significantly altered with each crew change. Future efforts at microbial prevention and control on orbit should emphasize the human and plant origins of microbes. Information on the microbial diversity in the condensate zone could be useful to guide the development of new strategies to prevent and control microbes during space flight.

Compact and low-actuator microgravity flying robots represent a promising avenue for narrow-area inspection in space stations. Thus, this article presents an annular attitude nozzle–duct fan thrust system for a compact and low-actuator microgravity flying robotic platform. The proposed thrust system features a more compact structure that reduces the number of actuators, achieving six-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) motion by only six actuators. However, achieving propulsion and precise attitude adjustments depends on the coordinated operation of these duct fans and nozzles. Thus, a coordinate allocation controller has been meticulously devised in this article to address this challenge. This controller autonomously regulates the rotational speed and direction of the duct fans. Additionally, dynamic models of a robotic platform are derived for the control design. Subsequently, a four-DOF helium balloon platform was also designed to validate the efficacy of the coordinated allocation controller and cut costs. The proposed platform maximizes the robot’s inherent symmetry along all three axes, thereby serving as an apt testbed for evaluating the feasibility of coupling attitude and propulsion control. The experiments verified the effectiveness of controllers for attitude control only, propulsion control only, and the coupling of attitude and propulsion control, thus demonstrating the robot’s excellent controllability performance.

In order to address the problem of low measurement accuracy of the angular velocity of the high-speed rotation aircrafts, in this article, an angular velocity reconstruction method (AVRM) based on microelectromechanical systems gyroscopes is proposed. To improve the measurement accuracy, three innovations are proposed. First, a partial strapdown inertial measurement system (PSIMS) which able to isolate aircraft high-speed rotation motion is designed, and enables the combination of small-range gyroscopes and optical encoders to measure large-amplitude angular velocities. Second, a composite range dual inertial measurement units configuration scheme is proposed to acquire angular velocity under the influence of precession. Finally, an AVRM based on BP neural network is constructed to improve measurement accuracy. The PSIMS is processed, and the comparative experiments are performed. The experimental results show that the PSIMS can isolate more than 90% of the aircraft's angular velocity. Also, the angular velocity measurement accuracy of the PSIMS with the AVRM is four times than the accuracy of the PSIMS without the AVRM.

In high-precision navigation tasks involving high-speed rotation aircraft, low-cost Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (MEMS) gyroscopes face a challenge that their accuracy deteriorates as the measurement range expands. In this paper, a novel mechanical configuration termed partial strapdown inertial measurement system (PSIMS) is designed. The PSIMS is able to isolate high-speed rotation motion of aircraft and suppress strong disturbances from the air, enabling the substitution of large-range MEMS gyroscopes with smaller-range counterparts to enhance measurement precision, meanwhile, three innovations have been proposed. Firstly, the three-dimensional dynamic model is established to reveal the motion laws of the PSIMS during the flight of the aircraft. Secondly, basing on the symmetrical cancellation method, the dual counterweight conjugate arrangement (DCCA) scheme is designed to reduce inertia force and improve the PSIMS’s disturbances suppression ability. Finally, the key parameters of the PSIMS are acquisition through genetic algorithm and a PSIMS prototype is processed. In order to verify the effect of the PSIMS, experiments were carried out and the results show that the PSIMS with DCCA scheme maintains its original isolation rotation capability, and its disturbance suppression ability is doubled.