Development and Fuzzy Control of a Pipe Inspection Robot

Author

Huang, Han-Pang ; Yan, Jiu-Lou ; Cheng, Teng-Hu

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. Eng., Nat. Taiwan Univ., Taipei, Taiwan

Volume

57

Issue

3

fYear

2010

fDate

3/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1088

Lastpage

1095

Abstract

A new pipe inspection robot, called the National Taiwan University (NTU) Navigator, is described in this paper. The NTU Navigator is lightweight, modularly designed, and easily manipulated and repaired. The robot consists of camera, steering, driving, and functional mechanism modules. Each module has its own control circuit and functions. In addition, a new stretch mechanism is designed and optimized in order to adapt the robot to pipes of various radii. The robot can be easily controlled using GUI on a PC. A stable and smooth fuzzy steering controller for operating inside the pipes is constructed. The stability and performance of the fuzzy controller are shown and compared with both the conventional proportional-integral-derivative controller and the flatness-based controller. Simulations and experiments further justify the performance of the NTU Navigator.

Keywords

control system synthesis; fuzzy control; inspection; mobile robots; stability; three-term control; GUI; National Taiwan University Navigator; camera module; control circuit; driving module; flatness-based controller; functional mechanism module; fuzzy controller stability; fuzzy steering controller; pipe inspection robot; proportional-integral-derivative controller; steering module; stretch mechanism; Fuzzy control; modular design; pipe inspection robot;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0278-0046

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TIE.2009.2031671

Filename

5256303