Abstract: Robotic systems and methods for tank seal inspection. A tank inspection robot includes a housing containing a drive assembly, and wheels disposed outside of the housing and operably coupled to the drive assembly. The tank inspection robot also includes at least one sensor coupled to, or disposed in or on a portion of the robot, for collecting data sufficient to evaluate a health, mechanical integrity or effectiveness of one or more circumferential seals between a floating roof, and an interior wall, of a storage tank. The disclosed robot and associated method enable safer and more efficient seal inspection routines as compared to conventional techniques.

Abstract: A Class A node comprising a slave bus controller circuit (SBCC) operates as a remote input/output device for performing Class A communications for a master Class B node over an interconnecting SAE J1850 or similar network. The SBCC receives messages from one or more Class B nodes to receive output data which appears at one or more output ports of the SBCC. Output data may be directly provided or may be combined with mask data such that only mask selected bits of the output data are passed to the one or more output ports of the SBCC. Input data directly connected to one or more input ports of the SBCC are transmitted back to a master node as an in-message response of the network. The SBCC provides inexpensive Class A communications using the SAE J1850 protocol which is primarily intended for Class B communications.

Abstract: A data transfer communication system capable of handling both node-to-node data transfer messages originating at any transmitter and transmitted to a specific receiver on the network and functional command messages originating at any transmitter and broadcast transmitted to an unspecified number of receivers on the network. Receivers are programmed to receive and acknowledge receipt of correspondingly addressed node-to-node type messages and certain correspondingly addressed functional command type messages with their unique addresses in a predetermined field location of the transmitted message. By utilizing pulse width modulation techniques, binary logic signals and a unique start signal are defined and have a dominant hierarchy that allows for bit-wise contention of the common data bus. In that manner, when contention of the data bus is resolved a higher priority message continues to be transmitted while losing contender delays its transmission until after the higher priority message is completed.