Mouse-sized robot built to inspect 17-mile-long Large Hadron Collider

Engineers at the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s robotics center, RACE, have developed a mouse-sized robot named PipelNEER to inspect the beamline pipes of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s most powerful particle accelerator. The robot, about 20 cm long, autonomously navigates narrow beamline spaces as small as 3.7 cm in diameter, operating under extreme conditions including ultra-low temperatures near -271°C and ultra-high vacuum. Equipped with AI and sensors, PipelNEER captures high-resolution images of the collider’s plug-in modules (PIMs) and uses trained AI models to detect faults such as bending in thin Radio Frequency components caused by thermal cycling. This targeted inspection approach allows engineers to identify and locate issues precisely without dismantling large sections of the 17-mile-long collider, significantly reducing maintenance time and cost. PipelNEER can travel up to 6 km on a single battery charge and includes multiple safety systems to monitor its performance