A study on autonomous pipeline manintenance robot. (3rd report. Structure and control of mark III and obstacle sensing).

摘要

A new type of mobile robots with a looping movement mechanism in the lateral and circular direction of a pipeline is presented in this paper for pipeline maintenance operations. This robot has four degrees of freedom and more flexibility than the first and the second prototype robots, which have the wheel type of mobile mechanism for horizontally located pipelines. This robot can pass over obstacles such as flanges and also T-joint pipelines, which the previously reported robots can do, and furthermore has more pipeline maintenance adaptabilities such that the new robot can move along vertically located pipelines and that it can move to an adjacently located pipeline. Therefore, the control must be so complicated that the dual mode control is introduced by employing the coordinate transformation matrix. To detect flanges, T-joints and pipelines in the neighbourhood, ultrasonic sensors as well as infra ray sensors are installed as the short and the long range sensors, so that the robot can autonomously move along pipelines.