A Custom IR Scanner for Landmark Detection with the Autonomous Sewer Robot MAKRO

Abstract

. MAKRO is an autonomous sewer robot designed for navigating in sewer pipes. In order to find its way to a specified goal manhole, it has to solve the self-localization problem. The sewer environment contains only few features that are usable as landmarks for re-localization, namely inlets, pipe joints and branching pipes. This paper describes how a custom 2D scanner involving infrared distance sensors with high sampling rates can be employed for robust and fast detection of inlets. Up to 150 measurements per second are preprocessed on a microcontroller, detection results are passed to higher level control programs on a faster CPU. The system requires only a brief initial automatic calibration. It is smaller and cheaper than comparable sensors, it is fast and it requires less on-board resources in terms of computing time, energy, and space. 1 The Autonomous Sewer Robot MAKRO MAKRO is a prototype of an autonomous mobile robot platform designed for navigating in inaccessible sewer pipe...