A Development of a Robot Manipulator for Pipe Flow Detection Using Ultrasonic Wave Echo

Abstract

In order to detect corrosions on the inside of pipes accurately, it is very important to set the posture of the ultrasonic probe normal to the surface of the pipes. It is indispensable for an inspection robot which moves on pipe lines autonomously to have an ability adjusting the posture of the probe. We propose an algorithm to adjust probe posture, which uses a characteristic of ultrasonic echo depending on posture of probes. In this paper, we will explain about the algorithm and describe about a posture adjusting experiment with a five DOF of robot manipulator newly designed. And we will propose a method to make a pipe-corrosion-map with pipe thickness data that are measured by automatic inspection robot.