• Proceedings of the Korea Information Processing Society Conference
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• 2019.10a
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• pp.1090-1093
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• 2019

유리섬유강화복합재료로 제작된 배관/덕트 조인트의 오버레이 자동접합을 할 수 있는 로봇이 개발되고 있으며 로봇의 구성 중 하나인 자동적층장치의 작업 시작 위치와 제자리 회전 오차를 극복할 수 있는 기준선에 대한 실시간 영상처리가 필요하다. 기존의 선 검출 알고리즘들은 연산량이 많아 실시간 처리가 어렵거나 전체 영상에서 잡음에 취약한 단점이 있다. 본 논문은 이러한 FRP 배관 및 덕트 내 색상 실선 인식 알고리즘의 효율적인 실시간 영상처리 방법에 관하여 소개하고 배관 내 라인 제어를 위한 선의 실제 거리를 계산하고 출력하는 방법을 나타내었다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.719-720
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• 2009

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.25 no.12
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• pp.2019-2029
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• 2001

Up to now a wide variety of researches on inpipe inspection robots have been introduced, but it still seems to be difficult to construct a robot providing mobility sufficient to navigate inside the complicated configuration of underground pipelines. This paper introduces a robot called MRINSPECT IV(Multifunctional Robotic Crawler for inpipe inSPECTion IV) for the inspection of urban gas pipelines with a nominal 4-inch inside diameter. The proposed robot can freely move along the basic configuration of pipelines such as along horizontal or vertical pipelines. Moreover it can travel along reducers, elbows, and steer in the branches by modulating the speeds of driving modules. Especially, its capability for steering in tile three-dimensional pipeline configuration has a competative edge over the other ones and provides excellent mobility in navigation. Its critical points in the design and construction are introduced and results of experiments are given.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.121-129
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• 2000

The robotic automation in NonDestructive Testing(NDT) is a promising field of research and it helps to expand the applications of NDT enormously. Especially, in the case of pipelines which are widely used in various industrial facilities, it is required to secure adequate ways of inspection in the usual maintenance activitites. In this paper, we present a robot system for inpipe inspection of underground urban gas pipelines. The robot is configured as an articulated structure like a snake with a tether cable. Two active driving vehicles are located in front and rear of the system, respectively and passive modules such as a NonDestructive Testing module and a control module are chained between the active vehicles. The proposed system has outstanding mobility by employing a new steering mechanism called Double Active Universal Joint, which makes it possible to cope with complicated configurations of underground pipelines. Characteristic features of the system are described and the construction of the system is briefly outlined.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.17 no.11
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• pp.1159-1167
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• 2011

A novel 3D tube scanning technique is proposed. The proposed tube scanning technique is developed for a special tube inspection module which consists of four line-lasers and one camera. Using the scanning module, we can reconstruct the 360 degree shapes of the inner surfaces of a cylindrical tube. From an image frame captured by the camera, we reconstruct a partial tube model based on four laser triangulations. Then by aligning such partial models with respect to a reference tube axis, a complete 3D shape of the tube is reconstructed. The tube axis in each reconstructed frame is aligned with a 3D Euclidean transformation to the reference axis. Several experiments show that the proposed method can align multiple tube axes very accurately and reconstruct 3D shapes of a tube with very low shape distortion.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.175-183
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• 2008

In this paper, a new in-pipe inspection robot was developed for inspecting a large number of circular pipe insides of the sea plant, ships, and buildings. A new pressure generation system was devised to inspect circular pipes with different diameters and to move up and down slant or perpendicular slopes inside of the pipe. Also, a design method was analyzed to decide the capacity of driving motor for the robot if the mass and maximum velocity of the robot are identified. According to the design specification, a robot was developed and was tested to verify the performance of the pressure generation system. For tests, a control system was developed.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.662-671
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• 2009

In this paper, a robot was developed for in-pipe cleaning and inspecting a large number of circular in-pipes of sea plants, ships, and buildings. A pressure generation mechanism was devised to inspect circular in-pipes with different diameters and to move up and down slant or perpendicular slopes in-pipes. For inspection of the dark inner side of the pipe, a light system using LED which dissipats small electricity was developed. Also, a design method was analyzed to decide the capacity of driving motor for the robot when the mass and maximum velocity of the robot are identified. The robot developed based on the design specification, was tested to verify the performance of the pressure generation mechanism. In addition, a control system was developed for the test.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.58-65
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• 2021

Most pipe-inspection robots have fixed sizes and use a wired cable system. Pipelines are generally composed of various structures, including bent pipes, vertical pipes, branch pipes, and holes, and it is difficult to explore the insides of such modular piping structures. In an offshore plant pipeline, a robot that can pass through the pipe hole in the downward direction or avoid obstacles, such as a measuring instruments, has not been introduced yet. In this study, an inspection robot that can travel through most pipelines in offshore plants is proposed. This robot uses mecanum wheels; upward, downward, and rotary motion; and a novel rotatable mechanism. Moreover, the robot is designed to be compact and lightweight to include additional devices in the middle.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.1239-1240
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• 2010

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.20 no.10
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• pp.1044-1050
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• 2014

Robots used for pipe inspection have been studied for a long time and many mobile mechanisms have been proposed to achieve inspection tasks within pipelines. Localization is an important factor for an inpipe robot to perform successful autonomous operation. However, sensors such as GPS and beacons cannot be used because of the unique characteristics of inpipe conditions. In this paper, an inpipe localization algorithm based on elbow detection is presented. By processing the projected marker images of laser pointers and the attitude and heading data from an IMU, the odometer module of the robot determines whether the robot is within a straight pipe or an elbow and minimizes the integration error in the orientation. In addition, an off-line positioning algorithm has been performed with forward and backward estimation and Procrustes analysis. The experimental environment has consisted of several straight pipes and elbows, and a map of the pipeline has been constructed as the result.