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Positioning and control of an AUV inside a water pipeline for non-contact in-service inspection

Positioning and control of an AUV inside a water pipeline for non-contact in-service inspection
Positioning and control of an AUV inside a water pipeline for non-contact in-service inspection

Water pipelines are an important part of our social infrastructure. Early failure detection of the pipelines will help to prevent breakdown and avoid the large cost involved if a accident occurs. As pipelines are enclosed environments and difficult to access, pipeline inspection robots are increasingly used for routine inspection and early failure detection. In our research we propose the use of a small untethered AUV for the visual inspection of the pipeline interior. The vehicle carries optical sensors to aid non-contact motion inside the pipeline and also to capture images of the pipeline interior. The vehicle has identical front and rear sections and has a pair of cone laser and fish eye camera on either ends. The cone lasers and cameras act as range sensors as well as payload to capture pipe line interior images. A realtime vision based control system was developed for the autonomous operation of the proposed vehicle inside pipelines. A new offline position estimation algorithm estimates lateral position and pose of the vehicle inside pipeline. Laboratory experiments were performed in a test pipeline without and with water flow. The results of the experiment show that the proposed technique is efficient for non-contact inspection of a pipeline and helps to make vehicle compact to navigate through the enclosed environment inside pipelines.

AUV, Cone laser, Navigation, Pipeline inspection, Vision based control
Painumgal, Unnikrishnan V.
ac4e8e54-6ff2-442c-a5ed-fd852e48b6a1
Thornton, Blair
8293beb5-c083-47e3-b5f0-d9c3cee14be9
Uray, Tamaki
689db479-1520-4f32-bb7a-ed34b26b921f
Nose, Yoshiaki
0476398e-6755-4a4c-a434-86d89d641f5b
Painumgal, Unnikrishnan V.
ac4e8e54-6ff2-442c-a5ed-fd852e48b6a1
Thornton, Blair
8293beb5-c083-47e3-b5f0-d9c3cee14be9
Uray, Tamaki
689db479-1520-4f32-bb7a-ed34b26b921f
Nose, Yoshiaki
0476398e-6755-4a4c-a434-86d89d641f5b

Painumgal, Unnikrishnan V., Thornton, Blair, Uray, Tamaki and Nose, Yoshiaki (2013) Positioning and control of an AUV inside a water pipeline for non-contact in-service inspection. OCEANS 2013 MTS/IEEE San Diego Conference: An Ocean in Common, , San Diego, CA, United States. 23 - 26 Sep 2013.

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Water pipelines are an important part of our social infrastructure. Early failure detection of the pipelines will help to prevent breakdown and avoid the large cost involved if a accident occurs. As pipelines are enclosed environments and difficult to access, pipeline inspection robots are increasingly used for routine inspection and early failure detection. In our research we propose the use of a small untethered AUV for the visual inspection of the pipeline interior. The vehicle carries optical sensors to aid non-contact motion inside the pipeline and also to capture images of the pipeline interior. The vehicle has identical front and rear sections and has a pair of cone laser and fish eye camera on either ends. The cone lasers and cameras act as range sensors as well as payload to capture pipe line interior images. A realtime vision based control system was developed for the autonomous operation of the proposed vehicle inside pipelines. A new offline position estimation algorithm estimates lateral position and pose of the vehicle inside pipeline. Laboratory experiments were performed in a test pipeline without and with water flow. The results of the experiment show that the proposed technique is efficient for non-contact inspection of a pipeline and helps to make vehicle compact to navigate through the enclosed environment inside pipelines.

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More information

Published date: 1 January 2013
Venue - Dates: OCEANS 2013 MTS/IEEE San Diego Conference: An Ocean in Common, , San Diego, CA, United States, 2013-09-23 - 2013-09-26
Keywords: AUV, Cone laser, Navigation, Pipeline inspection, Vision based control

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 434076
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/434076
PURE UUID: e85aeb8a-1bd1-4fc3-afaa-5f7efe9a5d39

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 11 Sep 2019 16:30
Last modified: 05 Mar 2024 18:18

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Contributors

Author: Unnikrishnan V. Painumgal
Author: Blair Thornton
Author: Tamaki Uray
Author: Yoshiaki Nose

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