Proceedings of the 2011 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics December 7-11, 2011, Phuket, Thailand

A study of pipe-cleaning and inspection robot

Nguyen Truong-Thinh
Department of Mechatronics University of Technical Education Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam thinhnt@hcmute.edu.vn

Nguyen Ngoc-Phuong
Department of Mechatronics University of Technical Education Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam phuongnn@hcmute.edu.vn

Tuong Phuoc-Tho
Department of Mechatronics University of Technical Education Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam tuongphuoctho@gmail.com

AbstractPipe cleaning and inspection robot is one of the new concepts of professional service robots. Sewer pipes are typically of non-man-entry classification (less than 0.8 m diameter). In this paper, a pipe-cleaning and inspection robot specifically designed for this function is proposed. This paper presents a new approach for design and development of cleaning robots in an unknown pipe workspace. To do so, we propose a new cutting method for cleaning work as well as an underwater inspection method. In this study, we discuss a communication which makes the cleaning robot navigate the sewer pipe. Finally, we also evaluate the performance of our proposed inspection and cleaning processes via experiments and real tests. Also, we verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods through computer simulations. Keywords-sewer robot; cleaning robot; inspection robot.

autonomous sewer surveying. The study is concentrated upon typical concrete sewer. The robot, which is about half size of the sewer diameter, must be able to align itself with the pipe axis. The only a priory information known is the geometrical shape of the sewer (cylindrical, etc.). This implies a geometrical constraint on the environment the robot can expect. Works for sewer cleaning and inspection are usually dangerous, tedious, boring, and repetitive tasks and thus a clear candidate for the application for robotics[1-2]. Researchers in artificial intelligence and robotics have made huge efforts, but it is still an open problem because of the unstructured environment of the cleaning operation. In this paper, a new robot for sewage pipe-cleaning operations in an underwater environment is proposed (Fig. 1). There are a several articles dealing with sewer problems associated with mobile robots, most of which are applicable to the pipe-inspection problem. However, there are a small number of papers dealing specifically with pipe-cleaning robots however they only described the simple cleaning works. These tend to be rather specialized, with the coverage movements as the main subject of interest, not focus on cleaning methods[3], thus it is difficult to apply to Viet Nam sewers. Conversely, this paper describes the integrated use of different competencies oriented toward the design of a complete-cleaning-and-inspection mobile robot, the most feasible industrial robotic operation. In the following sections the basic mechanical robot design, discussions about cleaning and inspection processes, details of motor control and robot control, and some functional tests are presented. The tests are carried out in lab and reality. This paper ends with the main conclusions.

I.

INTRODUCTION

The public sewage system in Viet Nam works in no good conditions: sewage may leak out, possibly polluting soil and ground water, and it may wash away soil, possibly crowding the foundations of buildings or the underground of streets and pavements. Often wastewater contains other chemicals used in modern life. These include heavy metals which are not biodegradable and may accumulate in river sediments, plants, insects, and fish. They originate from both industrial and domestic sources and (above certain levels) can be toxic to animals and humans. In Viet Nam, sometimes, the industrial discharges flow to sewers or householders always flush away toxic everything or products they use to the sewage. Almost of waste-water pipes in Viet Nam is non-man-sized passable sewages with a diameter less than 80cm. Maintenance of thousands km of sewer requires their permanent surveying. This paper presents the design and developed of wheeled, onelink vehicles for monitoring and cleaning works. The sewer robot is remote controlled via cable. These are generally surveyed by mounting a camera and a light either on a sled, which is dragged, or on a tractor, which is driven through the sewer, producing a video record of the pipes condition. In both cases ground operators who control the vehicle use a cable for guidance and data acquisition. The above process is both complicated and labour intensive in practice. This is the basic motivation of designing a robot that is able to travel autonomously through sewers. Several approaches are made on how to use a sewer video record to recover instant camera orientation and to assess sewer pipe deformations. The objective of our paper is to look into possibilities of an active vision system for, i.e. to investigate how a sewer robot can use its camera to keep orientation within a pipe while moving. The work is part of a project aimed at developing a robot for

Figure 1. Modeling of sewage pipe-cleaning and inspection robot.

978-1-4577-2138-0/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

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II.

MECHANICAL DESIGN

The choice of robot moving on inside-pipe surface is very complex especially underwater due to the complicated environment one can encounter and not predicate. Available choices typically include wheels, tracks, legs, and hybrids. Thus the choice of moving method depends completely on the type of environment and other drivers. In sewage pipe, the terrain is obstacles being many, but they are not taller than 40% of wheel height or 10% of pipes diameter after removing sludge spots or break them by cutting. In order to increase traction and stability, as many wheels as possible should touch the ground. Thus the mobile robot should be designed based on the tracking mobile robot. The undercarriage is higher than obstacles in pipe. Tracked robots can be thought of mobile robots with very large-diameter wheels, with the contact patch of a depressed wheel equivalent to that of the track. The tracked robot can get over obstacles smaller than 40-50% of largest sprocket diameter. Tracking robots are used mostly in outdoor rough terrain situations as well as flotation, traction and obstacle environment like as inside of sewage pipes. Inside-pipe mobile robot must be able to locomote on and over their deployment terrain. In pipe, three most important criteria are waterproof, sinkage and traction. All depend highly on sludge properties such as hardness, granularity and sticky as well as the weight and area of the mobile robot and the surface properties of robot for proper traction. Some books give the properly size a tracking system, theories represent some parameters as the tracking width B, the tracking height D, tracking length l, grouser depth h, and the robot weight W. Besides, other parameters can be used as internal friction angle , cohesion coefficient c, density , deformation moduli kc and k, power ratio n, and derived parameters Nc, Nq and N. In the robot, ratio of length to width is between 1.0 and 1.8[4]. The sinkage depth z depends on the robot weight and sludge parameters like as:
z =n Wb A ( k c + bk )

Figure 3. Traction diagram to evalute robot terrainability.

Because the tracking sinkage for sewer robot is always smaller than 40% of tracking height, thus the mobile robot cab moves through the medium. This requires as large a contact area as possible. Tracking width should also be maximized to reduce sinkage in cohesive materials as dreg, sludge spots. In this study, to increase traction and reduce compaction and bulldozing resistance, the tracking length is designed optimally to get the good traction with size and shape of grousers and reduced sinkage, without affecting the turning ability of the robot. To climb the obstacles in circle pipe, the grousers of sewer robot is designed especially. The torque w is required to overcome the certain-sized step h using a sprocket with radius of R as:

w = MgR cos a tan

2 2 R (R h ) R h

(3)

(1)

The grouser provides geometries, helps in step-climbing shown in Fig. 2. The robot is designed with the grousers to allow the climbing of obstacles where R = h. The tracks are perfectly rigid, they help in step-climbing. The grouser provides an effective leverage point, allowing the wheel to lift itself onto the step. The tracking wheels are driven by electrical motors. There are a wheel of radius R and mass N, coupled to a transmission ratio TN and efficiency t, a motor M outputting torque m driven by an amplifier (A) with efficiency A. The parameters are shown in Fig.3. The propulsive force FL requires keeping the robot at a certain speed on terrain calculated by below equation as. (4) t q R R The largest part of the public sewerage system consists of pipes which are too small to be inspected by humans. The diameter of these pipes varies from 20 to 80 cm. With this robot, the mechanical design of a cleaning inspection robot for sewage pipe must be ergonomic and small enough to move into typical pipes in a sewage network and as well as weight enough for easy transportation and removing the dust on pipes surface. In its design, several different problems have to be solved: the efficiency of the cleaning device, the placement of the motorized wheels, the on-board sensors, and the energy operation.

Drawbar pull is calculated like as:

FDP = [ Ac + H '+W tan ]

n +1 1 n 1 n W 2 n + 1 k + bk )( c ( ) l

(2)

FL =

mT N

Figure 2. Impact of tracking wheel rrousers on step-climbing.

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III.

CLEANING PRINCIPLES AND STRUCTURE

Most sewer cleaning robots use a water-jet as the principle cleaning device, but in our case, there are several differences from other ones. In Viet Nam, the sewer network is used for a long time, the dregs on the sewage pipe is solid, humus, garbage sometimes they are rubble and water-block. Thus a new concept for cleaning the sewage pipe should be given and used in Viet Nam. In this paper, a concept of the cleaning device has been designed because the aim of this paper is to focus on the cleaning and inspection problem. The cleaning principle of this robot is based on an electrical-powered roller brush that is ideal for a robotic application. Depending on the surface type, the roller brush can be very effective because it cleans by cutting and the rotation itself also generates a cutting force then it jets the water that avoids dust generation. Moreover, its design is very simple and cheap, having only three parts: a roller brush, a cutting plate, and a water-jet. Rotation axis of cutting plate coincides with pipes centerline. Thus the cutting tool removes out the rigid sludge spots.

There are many methods to remove the solid dreg cling to pipes surface as waterjet or mechanical impacts by cutting. However in this study a cutting plate is chosen to cleaning the sewage pipe. The selection of cutting tool depends on level of stick between pipe and dreg. If the cling objects are dust and garbage, the waterjet can be used. Sometimes there are rigid soil and brickbat stick on pipe, it is difficult to remove them, for this case the mechanical effect by cutting should be used. The tool uses in the robot for cutting is known as a cutting plate. In cleaning process, the cutting tool shears the humus, garbage rather than cuts it. The dreg sticks the sewage pipe, thus it is difficult to remove it. The dreg is shorn by relative motion between the cutting tool and the inside-surface of pipe. The shearing takes place when the cutting plate rotates around the its axis and impact to pipes surface to generate the shearing force then cut the solid dreg. In paper a new concept of cleaning sewage pipe suggests removing the material apart with a thin knife of cutting plate shown in Fig. 4. In process of cutting for leaning, there is a relation of rotation speed and feed rates of tool. This relationship is very important if quality and effective are considered. To analyze the stress and mechanical deformation of a cutting plate in the cleaning process, analytical processes of stress and deformation are required first. By using simulation obtained in deformation analysis based on cutting force input to sludge on the pipe, the stress and deformation analysis is conducted with a commercial ABAQUS package program. Fig. 5 shows the deformation shape of the cutting plate used for analysis. The cutting plate has a length of 280 mm, a width of 30 mm and the material properties of High Speed Steel (HSS). In the analysis, the cutting plate is assumed to be cut one direction by several cutting knights, and symmetric to center of cutting plate. Because of the symmetric condition of the geometry, half of the plate is selected to be a solution domain. IV. ELECTRICAL DESIGN Almost sewage pipes are not accessible for human. The current state of the art to maintain such pipes uses teleoperated robot platforms. The designed platform in this paper is connected to outside world by a cable that gets used for energy supply, for transmission of commands form the human operator to the device, for data transmission back to the operator, as a life-line in case the device gets stuck in the pipe, and as a measuring line for the distance travelled. An alternative to such systems is an autonomous robot which is able to operate remotely. The implementation of the communication link and the power supply becomes more difficult, a disadvantage which is outweighed by the mobility gained. It can be designed to move over obstacles and through junctions. Many problems of current systems could be solved. However, the sewerage system is a hazardous environment for robots to work in. It is a narrow, slippery, dirty and wet place. It can involve all levels of water in a sewer pipe from dry to a completely flooded one. It may include obstacles like sediments and damages like cracks, holes, non-expertly built junctions or roots grown into the pipe. The hardware architecture is an important part of the control architecture for the mobile robot. In order to travel accurately along the planned route, and in order to provide useful and timely information to users, accurate positioning is indispensable.

Figure 4. Principle of removing the sludge spots on pipe surface.

Figure 5. Simulated deformations of cutting plate by Abaqus.

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Figure 6. Working schematic of sewage robot.

Sewer robot can determine its position and direction based upon the amount of wheel rotation. This is referred to as the dead reckoning method. However, this method can lead to measurement errors accumulating in the integrated value. This means it is necessary to frequently receive increment values (position and direction) from rollers on robot. The rover receiver sends raw data to the positioning server every second. The positioning server receives the raw data from rover receivers and also receives data from a reference station which is installed nearby. The server calculates all receivers' accurate positions in real time and sends the positioning data to robot. The robot has three motors. The brush motor fixes cleaning intensity and is initially controlled in an open loop. Robot mobility is obtained by a AC motor with gearbox placed at the back of the robot. The driving motor is connected directly to tracking wheels to avoid slippage. The robot is operated using an industrial-style cable control unit, which allows it to be driven by cable. The signals from joystick and controlling panel go to the microcontroller to converts appropriate signals for robot actuators. The schematic of sewage robot is shown in Fig.6. V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS In the paper, a tracking robot has been studied which is able to work underwater in roughly cleaned sewer pipes with diameters ranging from 300 to 600 mm. The main difficulty in designing a platform is to find a modeling which satisfies the demands for low cost, reliability and easiness in use as well as work in wet environment. After a short time of building prototype, the sewer robot is able to clean and inspect the sewage pipes. A new kind of sewer robot has been designed and built that is used for cleaning and inspecting the sewage pipes of the Ho Chi Minh citys sewage networks shown in Fig. 7. The advantages and the characteristics of mechanical parts are analyzed in above sections. This robot can also be used on different targets with different diameters by getting of the curve tracking wheels. In this paper, a small wheeled system equipped with a TV-camera and cutting plate is used shown Fig. 7(b). Most of the properties of the robot are determined by the call for autonomous operation and mobility in sewers. The requirements of the robot are: remote operation, overcome the obstacles with smaller than 100 mm height. The dimensions of the robot are dependent mainly on manhole as well as diameter of waste water pipes. Thus in this section, concept of sewer cleaning and monitoring robot is tested, a designed and developed robot is like small a tracking tank which fits into the pipes in Viet Nam waste water network also

researched. The drives, control, power supply and sensors are attached to the robot in very small space. From the technological point of view, one solution to this problem is the use of a tracking robot described in above section. This system is controlled by an external operator who is sitting in a car near a manhole. Communication and power supply is provided by a cable connection. This system is controlled by an external operator who is sitting in a car near a manhole. Communication and power supply is provided by a cable connection. To get the image inside the pipe to inspect or clean, a camera CCD is used and attached to the robot. The weight of the cameras is light. Fig. 7 shows the proposed robot design and developed. The practical implementation of a inspection and cleaning robot is an interdisciplinary problem but in this paper, the attention is focused on the mechanical parts and their usability. In paper, the sewer robot was used for interacting between reality and virtual in experiments. The general frame work of the proposed virtual system for robot is as shown in Fig. 8. It enables users to perform system, identification, velocity, and position control of the robot. A 3D design of robot arm is made by Solidworks software and converted into VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language), which is more and more popular about virtual applications. User interface is developed in Visual Basic language. A GUI (Graphic User Interface) of VRML viewer typically presents a scene on a computer display along with viewing tools that allow the user to rotate, pan, move, or animate objects at the touch of a button like as real robot.

Figure 7. Modeling and prototype of sewer cleaning and inspection robot.

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Figure 8. GUI of virtual and reality modelling.

In this paper, the inspection and cleaning processes were experimented in reality. The robot is tested inside the sewage pipe of diameter 300 mm and controlled to move straight ahead like as Fig. 9. The robots have been tested for all these categories. The movements have been adapted using sensor information. The tests in straight pipes of diameter 300 mm have been carried out to examine the behaviour in pipes. Due to the length of the robot it stayed on the bottom middle line of the pipe. Thus moving straight ahead is possible without sensor based adaption in pipes of this diameter. In a typical situation not more than 100m can be inspected in one pass. This restriction adds considerably to maintenance costs because it frequently forces the maintenance teams to haul in the device, change the location, reinsert the device and continue working.

Figure 9. The robot moving in sewage pipe in reality.

Figure 10. Images from CCD camera taken inside the pipe in time.

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The robot was tested based on proposed method and a sewer image is captured by the CCD camera on robot. We performed several experiments to test the custom scanner in wet sewer pipes. The robot moved in plastic pipes of different diameters (30 cm and 40 cm). Fig. 10 shows an image from CCD camera taken inside the pipe. Experiments in real wet sewers are still to be performed in order to test the system under target application conditions. These high-risk experiments will be performed not earlier than in the very final phase of system development, trying to delay possible damages of a valuable research prototype as long as possible. VI. CONCLUSIONS This article describes a new kind of inspection and cleaning robot for sewage pipes. This project finishes the following innovative works: - A new kind of sewer robot has been built that is used for cleaning and inspecting the sewage pipes of the Ho Chi Minh Citys sewage networks. This robot can also be used on different targets with different diameters by getting of the curve tracking wheels. - A simple control system based on PC is designed to control the robot.

- Testing results show that the controller can effectively improve the control quality. This implies that the method can be realized and meet present needs. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to express thanks for Center of High Technology - Ho Chi Minh City University of Technical Education. This study was financially supported by Ho Chi Minh City University of Technical Education. REFERENCES
[1] K.-U. Scholl, V. Kepplin, K. Berns, R. Dillmann, An Articulated Service Robot for Autonomous Sewer Inspection Tasks, IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, pp. 10751080. Frank kirchner, Joachim Hertzerg, A Prototype Study of an Autonomous Robot Plaform for Sewage System Maintenance, Autonomous Robots, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 1-12, 2000. Erich Rome, Joachim Hertzberg, Frank Kirchner, Ulrich Licht, Thomas Christaller, Towards autonomous sewer robots: the MAKRO project, Urban Water, pp. 57-70, 1999. Shimon Y. Nof, Handbook of Industrial Robotics, 2nd Edition, Wiley, 1999.

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