Raptor: A Design of a Drain Inspection Robot

Frequent inspections are essential for drains to maintain proper function to ensure public health and safety. Robots have been developed to aid the drain inspection process. However, existing robots designed for drain inspection require improvements in their design and autonomy. This paper proposes...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Switzerland), 2021-08, Vol.21 (17), p.5742
Main Authors: Muthugala, M. A. Viraj J., Palanisamy, Povendhan, Samarakoon, S. M. Bhagya P., Padmanabha, Saurav Ghante Anantha, Elara, Mohan Rajesh, Terntzer, Dylan Ng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Algorithms
Autonomy
Cameras
Control systems design
Controllers
Design
drain inspection
Drains
Fuzzy logic
Infrastructure
Inspection
inspection robotics
Inspections
navigation control
Pipes
Public health
public health and safety
reconfigurable robotics
Robotics
Robots
Sensors
Stormwater management
Unmanned aerial vehicles
Water supply
Wheels
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Summary:Frequent inspections are essential for drains to maintain proper function to ensure public health and safety. Robots have been developed to aid the drain inspection process. However, existing robots designed for drain inspection require improvements in their design and autonomy. This paper proposes a novel design of a drain inspection robot named Raptor. The robot has been designed with a manually reconfigurable wheel axle mechanism, which allows the change of ground clearance height. Design aspects of the robot, such as mechanical design, control architecture and autonomy functions, are comprehensively described in the paper, and insights are included. Maintaining the robot’s position in the middle of a drain when moving along the drain is essential for the inspection process. Thus, a fuzzy logic controller has been introduced to the robot to cater to this demand. Experiments have been conducted by deploying a prototype of the design to drain environments considering a set of diverse test scenarios. Experiment results show that the proposed controller effectively maintains the robot in the middle of a drain while moving along the drain. Therefore, the proposed robot design and the controller would be helpful in improving the productivity of robot-aided inspection of drains.
ISSN:1424-8220
1424-8220
DOI:10.3390/s21175742