An Autonomous Mobile Inspection Robot for an Electric Power Sub-station

Simon Thompson, Masafumi Okajima, Satoshi Kagami

2013

Abstract

In this work, we describe the development of an outdoor, autonomous mobile robot that performs inspections of various facilities within an electric power sub-station. A segway-based robot was developed that can perform autonomous navigation along a given set of waypoints and perform inspection tasks (taking photographs at set locations). A retractable leg system was developed to allow the robot to enter/exit self-balancing mode and achieve a stable rest position from which to perform inspection tasks. The robot platform, localisation and control systems, and the inspection process are described, and a real world experiment consisting of navigation over a 1km path with 5 inspection points is reported. All inspection tasks were completed to the satisfaction of plant operators.

References

  1. Davison, A. and Kita, N. (2003). Active visual localisation for cooperating inspection robots. In IEEE/RSJ International Conference of Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
  2. Heredia, G. and Ollero, A. (2007). Stability of autonomous vehicle path tracking with pure delays in the control loop. In Advanced Robotics, Vol 21, No. 1-2.
  3. Kabasawa, M., Thompson, S., Kagami, S., and Okajima, M. (2012). Development of trapezoidal linked legs for a wheeled inverted pendulum. In JSME Robotics and Mechatronics Conference.
  4. Kagami, S., Hanai, R., Hatao, N., and Inaba, M. (2010). Outdoor 3d map generation based on planar feature for autonomous vehicle navigation in urban environment. In Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
  5. Levinson, J., Montemerlo, M., and Thrun, S. (2003). Mapbased precision vehicle localisation in urban environments. In Proceedings of Robots, Science and Systems.
  6. Madhavan, R. and Durrant-Whyte, H. F. (2004). Terrainaided localization of autonomous ground vehicles. In Automation in Construction.
  7. Moralez, Y. and Tsubouchi, T. (2007). Gps moving performance on open sky and forested paths. In Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems.
  8. Nguyen, H. G., Morrell, J., Mullens, K., Burmeister, A., Miles, S., Farrington, N., Thomas, K., and Gage, D. (2004). Segway robotic mobility platform. In SPIE Proc, 5609: Mobile Robots XVII,.
  9. Ohno, K., Tsubouchi, T., Shigematsu, B., and Yuta, S. (2004). Proper use of gps for outdoor navigation by an autonomous mobile robot. In Proceedings of Int. Conf. on Intelligent Autonomous Systems.
  10. Osuka, K. (2003). Development of mobile inspection robot for rescue activities: Moira. In IEEE/RSJ International Conference of Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
  11. Sasaki, Y., Kabasawa, M., Thompson, S., Kagami, S., and Oro, K. (2012). Spherical microphone array for spatial sound localisation for a mobile robot. In Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems.
  12. Suzumori, K., Miyagawa, T., Kimura, M., and Hasegawa, Y. (1999). Micro inspection robot for 1-in pipes. In IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, Vol. 4, No. 3.
  13. Thompson, S., Kagami, S., and M.Okajima (2011a). Facet classification in 3d polygon maps for autonomous vehicle localisation. In Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Intelligent Unmanned Systems.
  14. Thompson, S., Kagami, S., and M.Okajima (2011b). Selection of polygon sets for 6dof localisation of autonomous vehicles. In Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Systems, Man and Cybernetics.
  15. Thompson, S., Kagami, S., and Okajima, M. (2010). Constrained 6dof localisation for autonomous vehicles. In Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Systems, Man and Cybernetics,.
  16. Thrun, S., Burgard, W., and Fox, D. (2001). Robust monte carlo localisation for mobile robots. In Artificial Intelligence, vol. 128.
  17. Xia, T. K., Yang, M., and Yang, R. Q. (2006). Vision based global localization for intelligent vehicles. In Proceedings of the Intelligent Vehicles Symposium.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Thompson S., Kagami S. and Okajima M. (2013). An Autonomous Mobile Inspection Robot for an Electric Power Sub-station . In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO, ISBN 978-989-8565-71-6, pages 300-306. DOI: 10.5220/0004480503000306


in Bibtex Style

@conference{icinco13,
author={Simon Thompson and Satoshi Kagami and Masafumi Okajima},
title={An Autonomous Mobile Inspection Robot for an Electric Power Sub-station},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO,},
year={2013},
pages={300-306},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004480503000306},
isbn={978-989-8565-71-6},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics - Volume 2: ICINCO,
TI - An Autonomous Mobile Inspection Robot for an Electric Power Sub-station
SN - 978-989-8565-71-6
AU - Thompson S.
AU - Kagami S.
AU - Okajima M.
PY - 2013
SP - 300
EP - 306
DO - 10.5220/0004480503000306