Robot Posture Estimation Using Inner-Pipe Image

This paper proposes the methodology in image processing algorithm that estimates the pose of the pipe crawling robot. The pipe crawling robots are usually equipped with a lighting device and a camera on its head for monitoring and inspection purpose. The proposed methodology is using these devices without introducing the extra sensors and is based on the fact that the position and the intensity of the reflected light varies with the robot posture. The algorithm is divided into two parts, estimating the translation and rotation angle of the camera, followed by the actual pose estimation of the robot. To investigate the performance of the algorithm, the algorithm is applied to a sewage maintenance robot.