Development and Fuzzy Control of a Pipe Inspection Robot

A new pipe inspection robot, called the National Taiwan University (NTU) Navigator, is described in this paper. The NTU Navigator is lightweight, modularly designed, and easily manipulated and repaired. The robot consists of camera, steering, driving, and functional mechanism modules. Each module has its own control circuit and functions. In addition, a new stretch mechanism is designed and optimized in order to adapt the robot to pipes of various radii. The robot can be easily controlled using GUI on a PC. A stable and smooth fuzzy steering controller for operating inside the pipes is constructed. The stability and performance of the fuzzy controller are shown and compared with both the conventional proportional-integral-derivative controller and the flatness-based controller. Simulations and experiments further justify the performance of the NTU Navigator.