Development of a Robot Chain System for Small Gas Pipeline Inspection Based on Wireless Relay Communication Using RSSI

Abstract

Currently, robots are used for pipeline inspection since it is more convenient than manual inspection. In this paper, we proposed a concept of wireless relay communication to assist robot to extend the inspection range. Specifically, we developed a tracked robot-chain system. Leakage information of pipes are transmitted through multiple robots. To ensure the stability of relay communication between adjacent robots, we adopt RSSI-based evaluation method. We conducted some experiments to evaluate relay transmission efficiency, RSSI-based cooperative movement, and comprehensive performance. The results revealed that our proposed robot chain system could realize relatively accurate data relay transmission and basically RSSI-based coordinated movement.