Robotic Arm and Remote Cameras

The challenge: How do you access a 2,000 year old tomb that lies under a Jerusalem apartment complex?

The only way into the tomb was through a basement corridor next to the tenants’ storage rooms. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) was used by the team in order to locate the precise location of the tomb under the building.

Using 8 inch custom-made diamond tooth drills, two holes were drilled into the basement floor. They were 20 cm in diameter and 2.5 meters deep. A robotic arm was custom-made so that it could be introduced into the tomb through the holes. Due to its entry location, at the southwest corner of the building, the arm
required a 3 meter extension in order to provide full access to the 3 meter square tomb. With the floor to ceiling height being just over 1 meter, the longest section of the arm was also limited to 1 meter. As a result, for the arm to get into the tomb and then unfold to its full length below ground, it had to be
designed with two bendable sections.

All this was accomplished by a combination of pneumatic and mechanical pieces. The end result was a robotic arm that acted like an inverted construction crane.

The end of the arm is controlled by a series of air cylinders. The payload at the end of the arm is a remote controlled pan tilt zoom (PTZ) camera with self-contained lights weighing 3 kg (6.5 Ibs). The contents of the tomb were captured by the camera’s zoom lens in HD video. Using parallel laser
techniques, this camera was also able to accurately measure objects in its view.

The PTZ camera’s only limitation was that it could not fit between the 2.5 to 7.5 cm (1-3 inch) spaces between the ossuaries, or the ossuaries and the walls. To overcome this problem, and to be able to read the inscriptions on the inaccessible sides of the ossuaries, an 8 meter (25 ft) flexible video borescope
was incorporated into the design of the arm. An 8.4 mm (.33 inch) diameter camera was placed into position by the arm and, using its remote controlled camera movement, it captured both video and still images in all the hard to reach places.

The camera and crane apparatus made it possible – for the first time ever – to capture images that will change the way we view the birth of Christianity.

We thank GE Inspection Technologies for their participation.