Development of a Semi-autonomous Aerial Vehicle for Sewerage Inspection
Abstract
This paper describes the design, development and field tests of an aerial vehicle for semi-autonomous inspection of sewer pipes. This vehicle is able to localize and align itself with respect to the longitudinal axis of the pipe, and to keep a predefined height over the water. The human operator only needs to send high-level commands to move the vehicle forward or backward along the pipe, and this navigation is then done safely in an autonomous manner. We tested our system in a realistic mock-up scenario provided by a city water management company. Our field tests show that the platform is operational and fulfill the requirements for sewer inspections.
Keywords
UAV Aerial inspection Indoor navigationNotes
Acknowledgements
This work has been developed in the Spanish SAAIC project and it has received funding from CTA and CDTI. It has also been funded by ARM-EXTEND in the Spanish RD plan (DPI2017-89790-R). We would also like to thank Rafael Salmoral for his support during flying tests.
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