Underground Pipe Inspection Robot Control Technology Research And Development

Since the foundation of the nation, the rapid rise of Chinese cities--industrial cities, tourist cities, and economic development zones having sprung up--have contributed to the prosperity of the country. Although a great number of public utilities are in constant development and transformation, the problem of different aging degree facilities being used is remain serious. For instance, some cities are using the drainage facilities that even made in Ming or Qing dynasties. Due to the particularity of being buried underground, the underground pipelines are hard to be carried out relative works, including internal detection and localization. Thus it is a rough duty to complete the nationwide underground pipeline detection survey. The methods that adopting the traditional technical means--such as opening the pipelines and sending men down are difficult or even not able to be implemented. In addition, because of the limitations of preservation means in long period, most of the present pipelines have varying degrees of pipeline leakage, corrosion, sludge clog and even collapse, which may not only effect the capacity of city pipe drainage so as to hinder the constant development of urban economy and industry, but also lead to pipelines crack, gas leakage and other damage interfereing the normal order of people's life and the safety of people.With the rapid development of science and technology, especially the application of computer technology and robotics control technology as well as the improvement of mapping and exploration, modern ways and means can be adopted to facilitate underground pipeline detection. It has positive significance to promote and accelerate the urban underground pipeline detection survey. Currently, the foreign-developed underground pipeline inner detecting device with robot technology is able to detect the inner conditions of pipelines or artesian wells, and to provide accurate quantitative data as well, leading to detect and identify pipe defects. This device now is broadly in use in overseas municipal pipeline network maintenance and detection, in particular, the inner defects of pipelines or artesian wells. However, The underground pipeline inner detecting robot in China starts late and mainly imports from oversea. And due to the expensive price of imported device, it is actual not in widespread use.Combining the performance and characteristics of foreign-developed underground pipeline inner detecting robot with practical needs of domestic users, this paper, under the analysis on remote detecting demand of underground pipeline robot, proposes a new underground pipeline detecting robot program with the whole system design and planning as well as the system software and hardware platform. In order to achieve sound system real-time and stability, the robot is controlled mainly by SCM control system, directing robot movements both in hardware and software implementations and building a superior platform for robot control system development.New underground pipeline detecting robot system, integrated robot control technology features and key technologies of the domestic underground pipeline inspection projects, has achieved accuracy of inner pipeline image grabbing and robot remote control. Furthermore, with increasing successful application in more and more municipal conservation units from several domestic large and medium cities, the system gained remarkable economic benefits and social effects, having capacious market future.