Guidance of Mobile Robot for Inspection of Pipe

파이프 내부검사를 위한 이동로봇의 유도방법

The purpose of this paper is the development of guidance algorithm for a mobile robot which is used to acquire the position and state information of the pipe defects such as crack, damage and through hole. The data used for the algorithm is the range data obtained by the range sensor which is based on an optical triangulation method. The sensor, which consists of a laser slit beam and a CCD camera, measures the 3D profile of the pipe's inner surface. After setting the range sensor on the robot, the robot is put into a pipe. While the camera and the LSB sensor part is rotated about the robot axis, a laser slit beam (LSB) is projected onto the inner surface of the pipe and a CCD camera captures the image. From the images the range data is obtained with respect to the sensor coordinate through a series of image processing and applying the sensor matrix. After the data is transformed into the robot coordinate, the position and orientation of the robot should be obtained in order to guide the robot. In addition, analyzing the data, 3D shape of the pipe is constructed and the numerical data for the defects of the pipe can be found. These data will be used for pipe maintenance and service.