Highly compact robots for inspection of power plants

Caprari,; Breitenmoser,; Fischer, Monika; Hürzeler,; Tache,; Siegwart, Roland; Schoeneich,; Rochat,; Mondada, Francesco; Moser,

doi:10.1109/carpi.2010.5624412

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 14 publications

(2 reference statements)

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“…Relevant related works include the inspection of ship hulls, e.g., with an autonomous underwater vehicle [2], the inspection of industrial piping systems, e.g., with a pole-climbing robot [3], as well as the inspection of tanks, generators and boilers as they typically appear in power plants [4], [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface reconstruction and path planning for industrial inspection with a climbing robot

Breitenmoser¹,

Siegwart²

2012

2012 2nd International Conference on Applied Robotics for the Power Industry (CARPI)

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Abstract-Inspection and maintenance tasks in the power industry often require tools to be moved smoothly in direct contact or close proximity over surfaces of curved tube-like structures. This paper addresses the problem of navigating robotic devices, namely a wheeled climbing robot carrying an inspection tool, on surfaces as they typically appear in steam chests of power plants. The surfaces are modeled by triangle meshes. Several state-ofthe-art surface reconstruction methods are evaluated, and meshes are constructed for 3D point clouds taken with different laser scanners and for tube structures varying in shape, dimension and surface property. Each mesh represents an embedded graph, and thus directly enables graph search methods to plan paths of triangle strips over the surface. Discrete path planning and continuous robot control are combined to a hybrid system, which steers the robot smoothly along the triangle strip to the target regions on the surface. The navigation approach applies to robotic surface inspection, and is verified in simulation experiments by moving a robot on triangle meshes reconstructed from real data.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface reconstruction and path planning for industrial inspection with a climbing robot

Breitenmoser¹,

Siegwart²

2012

2012 2nd International Conference on Applied Robotics for the Power Industry (CARPI)

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“…Quadrotors consist of four rotors attached to a rigid crossshaped airframe, as shown in Figure 1, with two opposing rotors rotating clockwise (1,3) and the other two rotating counterclockwise (2,4). The quadrotor is controlled by using the differential control of the thrust generated by each rotor.…”

Section: System Model and Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is mainly because of their ability to effectively perform different tasks in a wide range of military and commercial applications. Currently, UAVs are being used in several applications such as search and rescue missions [1], power plant inspection [2], surveillance [3], agricultural services [4], and mapping and photography [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constant Altitude Flight Control for Quadrotor UAVs with Dynamic Feedforward Compensation

Razinkova¹,

Kang²,

Cho³

et al. 2014

International Journal of Fuzzy Logic and Intelligent Systems

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This study addresses the control problem of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) during the transition period when the flying mode changes from hovering to translational motion in the horizontal plane. First, we introduce a compensation algorithm that improves height stabilization and reduces altitude drop. The main principle is to incorporate pitch and roll measurements into the feedforward term of the altitude controller to provide a larger thrust force. To further improve altitude control, we propose the fuzzy logic controller that improves system behavior. Simulation results presented in the paper highlight the effectiveness of the proposed controllers.

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“…Nowadays, UAVs are being used in several types of missions including search and rescue missions [1], wild fire surveillance [2], monitoring over nuclear reactors [3], power plants inspection [4], agricultural services [5], mapping and photographing [5], marine operations [6], battle damage assessment [7], border interdiction prevention [8] and law enforcement [9].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Model predictive quadrotor control: attitude, altitude and position experimental studies

Alexis

Nikolakopoulos

Tzes

2012

IET Control Theory &Amp; Applications

313

115

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This study addresses the control problem of an unmanned quadrotor in an indoor environment where there is lack of absolute localisation data. Based on an attached inertia measurement unit, a sonar and an optic-flow sensor, the state vector is estimated using sensor fusion algorithms. A novel switching model predictive controller is designed in order to achieve precise trajectory control, under the presence of forcible wind gusts. The quadrotor's attitude, altitude and horizontal linearised dynamics result in a set of piecewise affine models, enabling the controller to account for a larger part of the quadrotor's flight envelope while modelling the effects of atmospheric disturbances as additive-affine terms in the system. The proposed controller algorithm accounts for the state and actuation constraints of the system. The controller is implemented on a quadrotor prototype in indoor position tracking, hovering and attitude manoeuvres experiments. The experimental results indicate the overall system's efficiency in position/altitude/attitude set-point manoeuvres.

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Highly compact robots for inspection of power plants

Cited by 18 publications

References 14 publications

Surface reconstruction and path planning for industrial inspection with a climbing robot

Surface reconstruction and path planning for industrial inspection with a climbing robot

Constant Altitude Flight Control for Quadrotor UAVs with Dynamic Feedforward Compensation

Model predictive quadrotor control: attitude, altitude and position experimental studies

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