Localization Techniques for In-Pipe Robots in Water Distribution Systems

EasyChair Preprint 4244

Abstract

In-pipe robots are designed to go in inaccessible parts of the pipeline systems to do water quality monitoring, leak detection, and visual inspection by a camera. However, some challenges in which limit their applicability. These challenges are power considerations, wireless underground communication, mechanism flexibility, actor architecture, and control algorithm. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end methodology that lists the requirements and procedures to design and fabricate in-pipe robots. Wireless communication between Base Station (BS) and the robot operating underground is an ongoing challenge for researchers. We focus on wireless communication underground and propose two alternatives to address this issue. In the first scenario “two parallel robots” that communicate based on the Magnetic Induction (MI) communication are presented. We simulate the proposed MI communication link based on the real operating condition. The simulation result shows the received signal power can be detected with a lock-in amplifier in 1.4m distance between primary and secondary coils. Also, we propose another wireless communication solution based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in 13.56MHz carrier frequency and ISO15693 standard. The mechanism in which the RFID based wireless communication works is explained an experiment is done to analyze the performance of the setup. The experiment results show that the proposed setup can penetrate the harsh and dynamic environment of water. Also, the read range was measured around 10cm which is a safe range to avoid overlap for the nearby readers that lead to confusion for the robot.

Keyphrases: Design and Fabrication, In-pipe robots, Magnetic inductive communication, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) communication, Wireless underground communication

@booklet{EasyChair:4244,
  author    = {Saber Kazeminasab and Mohsen Aghashahi},
  title     = {Localization Techniques for In-Pipe Robots in Water Distribution Systems},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 4244},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2020}}