Raptor: A Design of a Drain Inspection Robot

• 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
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s21175742

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.