Abstract
This paper describes an approximation technique of a pipe profile utilizing data collected by a wheel-type robot in pipe. A robot having H-shaped structure is treated to obtain the angular and linear information. First, we show that the pipe form is expressed as a combination of linear, curved, and reduced sections with three parameters such as direction, length, and curvature. Second, the locomotion of the robot is simulated to collect the angular information of the frame and wheels. Third, calculation procedure for reforming the pipe profile utilizing such information about the angular displacement between the frame and the links, rotated angles of some wheels, and sometimes the linear displacement of the frame's extension or compression is shown. Also the approximation errors caused by the differences of wheel radius, wheel base length and sampling distance of a driving wheel are visualized in graphs and evaluated by using appropriate error functions. The proposed approximation method shows the effect also in the case when the robot is of V-shaped or V2-shaped structure by taking compatible parameters of a robot strucure into consideration.
