Development of a small autonomous pipe inspection robot (Modularization of hardware using the technique of wooden mosaic work)

Abstract

Since 1965, the number of cities constructing and operating sewerage systems had been on the rise, with waterway overhaul now prevalent in many parts of Japan. However, as the number of facilities under management has increased, their decrepitness has become obvious. The average service life of sewer pipe has been determined to be 50 years, but in reality, 30 years after pipes are built there is a tendency for rapid road subsidence and cave in. This situation stressed to us the importance of regular sewer pipe maintenance and inspection. In line with this, recently, robots have been actively used for inspection to reduce workload. However, the full system for the robots becomes large scale, resulting in high expense and poor maintenance. In this study, to solve these problems, we used the idea of a rescue robot, which we have been developing over a long period, to develop a small, portable inspection robot. Furthermore, we got a hint from "a secret box", one of Japanese traditional "wooden mosaic works" and assembled the module without using a single screw. This thesis details our work developing the small, autonomous pipe inspection robot and its specifications, including the updated hardware and software of the robot. The structure of the contrived "wooden mosaic work" was described. Its utility was confirmed through practical experimentation on its movement.

Keywords

• exploration robot
• wooden mosaic work
• mobile robot
• robot control
• water pipe
• distributed processing system