AN ANGLE DETECTION ALGORITHM FOR WORM-LIKE LOCOMOTION ROBOTS WORKING IN PIPELINE ENVIRONMENTS

抄録

Worm-like robots are widely used in confined environments for special operations, such as pipeline inspection and survivor rescue. With the retrograde peristalsis wave as the fundamental locomotion mechanism, the worm-like robot may exhibit undesired backward slippage due to the failure of the anchoring segments, inducing the loss of locomotion efficiency. The backward-slippage phenomenon is closely related to robot dynamics and the working environment. To solve this problem, a prerequisite is used to identify the inclination angle of the pipeline. To this end, in this research, Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) are embedded into the worm-like robot for motion and environmental perception. Through attitude calculation and filtering algorithm, the real-time angle of the robot can be determined, and the changes in the inclination angles of the pipeline can be perceived. The effectiveness of the proposed solution is verified through experiments. This research greatly expands the perception capability of worm-like robots and provides a basis for feedback control to reduce slippage effects.