Sistema de navegação e localização para um robô escalador magnético de inspeção baseado em sensores LIDAR

Abstract

This work aims to optimize localization of a climbing inspection robot for spherical LPG -- Liquified Petroleum Gas -- tanks and allow autonomous navigation along the entire surface of these tanks. One solution envolving small structures detection using LIDAR sensors is applied to the weld beads that are present inside the tanks. This solution is developed on the first part of this work. Following, a data fusion technique is used to combine the diferent odometry sources on the robot, resulting in a better, higher precision on the inspection as a whole. Finnaly, simultaneous mapping and navigation on the exterior of the spherical tank was studied in order to add one extra layer to the digital map, pinpointing the places where failures and weld beams were found. Validation tests for each one of this techniques are carried out and a performance analysis is also documented herein.