New approach to the self-localization of autonomous sewer inspection robots

Development of an autonomous pipe inspection system requires design and development of an un-tethered mobile robot platform equipped with the required sensors using for autonomous pipe assessment and damage detection. Autonomous sewer robots must include sensors for their own control, navigation and localization, not only those for sewer state assessment and damage detection. In addition, localization is an issue not only for the proper robot control, so that the robot knows where it is, but also for inspection, as detected damages have to be reported with their location. In this paper, a new approach is presented to simplify the conventional autonomous navigation and self-localization systems. In the presented method, robot self-localization is realized by a pair of passive arms mounted to the side of the developed mobile robot platform.