Development of a Vision-based Position Estimation System for the Inspection and Maintenance Manipulator of Steam Generator Tubes a in Nuclear Power Plant

A vision-based tool position estimation system for the inspection and maintenance manipulator working inside the steam generator bowl of nuclear power plants can help human operators ensure that the inspection probe or plug are inserted to the targeted tube. Some previous research proposed a simplified tube position verification system that counts the tubes passed through during the motion and displays only the position of the tool. In this paper, by using a general camera calibration approach, tool orientation is also estimated. In order to reduce the computation time and avoid the parameter bias problem in an ellipse fitting, a small number of edge points are collected around the large section of the ellipse boundary. Experiment results show that the camera calibration parameters, detected ellipses, and estimated tool position are appropriate.