Recognition of branch pipe for pipe inspection robot using fiber grating vision sensor

This paper describes a pipe inspection robot with multiple joints. We are developing the pipe inspection robot which is able to move in vertical pipe and correspond with changing radius pipe. Furthermore, our robot can go around a branch pipe by attaching to 2 robots. On the other hand, it is difficult to recognize a position of branch pipe, self position and self posture because inside of pipe is dark and surrounded by walls. In this paper, we develop the fiber grating vision sensor to recognize a position of branch pipe for the pipe inspection robot. We propose the branch pipe recognition using fiber grating vision sensor. And we show several experimental results of branch pipe recognition.