A benchmark mechatronics platform to assess the inspection around pipes with variable pitch quadrotor for industrial sites

Abstract This paper investigates the inspection-of-pipe topic in a new framework, by rotation around a pipe, peculiar to industrial sites and refineries. The evolution of the ultimate system requires prototype design and preliminary tests. A new benchmark has been designed and built to mimic the rotation around a pipe, with the main purpose of assessing the different types of rotors and control systems. The benchmark control system presents a mechatronics package including mechanical design and machining, electronics and motor drive, motor-blade installation, computer programming, and control implementation. The benchmark is also modular, working with two modes of one- and two-degree-of-freedom (DoF), easily interchangeable. To cover a full rotation, conventional fixed-pitch drones fail to provide negative thrusts; nonetheless, variable-pitch (VP) rotor quadcopters can produce that in both directions. A closed-loop nonlinear optimal method is chosen as a controller, so-called, “the state-dependent Riccati equation (SDRE)” approach. Optimal control policies are challenging for experimentation though it has been successfully done in this report. The advantage of the VP is also illustrated in a rotation plus radial motion in comparison with fixed-pitch rotors while a wind gust disturbs the inspection task. The proposed VP system compensated the disturbance while the fixed pitch was pushed away by the wind gust. The solution methods to the SDRE were mixed, a closed-form exact solution for the one-DoF system, and a numerical one for the two-DoF. Solving the Riccati online in each time step is a critical issue that was effectively solved by the implementation approach, through online communication with MATLAB software. Both simulations and experiments have been performed along with a discussion to prove the application of VP systems in rotary-motion pipe inspection.

[1]  Esmaeel Khanmirza,et al.  Trajectory control of aggressive maneuver by agile autonomous helicopter , 2019 .

[2]  André Fenili.  The Rigid-Flexible Robotic Manipulator: Nonlinear Control and State Estimation Considering a Different Mathematical Model for Estimation , 2013 .

[3]  Liu Chun-Sheng,et al.  Optimal robust control for attitude of quad-rotor aircraft based on SDRE , 2015, 2015 34th Chinese Control Conference (CCC).

[4]  Guillermo Heredia,et al.  Positioning System for Pipe Inspection with Aerial Robots Using Time of Flight Sensors , 2019, ROBOT.

[5]  Sangshin Kwak,et al.  Suboptimal Control Scheme Design for Interior Permanent-Magnet Synchronous Motors: An SDRE-Based Approach , 2014, IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics.

[6]  Chen Yu,et al.  Development of Power Transmission Line Defects Diagnosis System for UAV Inspection based on Binocular Depth Imaging Technology , 2019 .

[7]  Soumya Ranjan Sahoo,et al.  Robust Attitude Tracking in the Presence of Parameter Uncertainty for a Variable-Pitch Quadrotor , 2018, 2018 Annual American Control Conference (ACC).

[8]  Vincenzo Lippiello,et al.  Nonlinear Model Predictive Control for the Stabilization of a Wheeled Unmanned Aerial Vehicle on a Pipe , 2019, IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters.

[9]  Youdan Kim,et al.  Design of an adaptive missile autopilot considering the boost phase using the SDRE method and neural networks , 2016, J. Frankl. Inst..

[10]  A. Ollero,et al.  MHYRO: Modular HYbrid RObot for contact inspection and maintenance in oil & gas plants , 2020, IEEE/RJS International Conference on Intelligent RObots and Systems.

[11]  Maurizio Montagnuolo,et al.  Director Tools for Autonomous Media Production with a Team of Drones , 2020, Applied Sciences.

[12]  Aníbal Ollero,et al.  Novel Aerial Manipulator for Accurate and Robust Industrial NDT Contact Inspection: A New Tool for the Oil and Gas Inspection Industry , 2019, Sensors.

[13]  Holger Voos.  Nonlinear state-dependent Riccati equation control of a quadrotor UAV , 2006, 2006 IEEE Conference on Computer Aided Control System Design, 2006 IEEE International Conference on Control Applications, 2006 IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Control.

[14]  Tayfun Çimen,et al.  Survey of State-Dependent Riccati Equation in Nonlinear Optimal Feedback Control Synthesis , 2012 .

[15]  Alexander L. Fradkov,et al.  Control of the coupled double pendulums system , 2005 .

[16]  Jonathan P. How,et al.  Actuator Constrained Trajectory Generation and Control for Variable-Pitch Quadrotors , 2012 .

[17]  S. R. Nekoo,et al.  Optimized Thrust Allocation of Variable-pitch Propellers Quadrotor Control: A Comparative Study on Flip Maneuver , 2019, 2019 Workshop on Research, Education and Development of Unmanned Aerial Systems (RED UAS).

[18]  Farhan Gandhi,et al.  Performance Comparison of Quadcopters with Variable-RPM and Variable-Pitch Rotors , 2019 .

[19]  Saeed Rafee Nekoo,et al.  Tutorial and Review on the State-dependent Riccati Equation , 2019, Journal of Applied Nonlinear Dynamics.

[20]  Giuseppe Aiello,et al.  The Employment of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Analyzing and Mitigating Disaster Risks in Industrial Sites , 2020, IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management.

[21]  Gerhard P. Hancke,et al.  A 2-D Acoustic Source Localization System for Drones in Search and Rescue Missions , 2019, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[22]  Jonathan P. How,et al.  Comparison of Fixed and Variable Pitch Actuators for Agile Quadrotors , 2011 .

[23]  Dario Floreano,et al.  An origami-inspired cargo drone , 2017, 2017 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

[24]  Aníbal Ollero,et al.  Robotic System for Inspection by Contact of Bridge Beams Using UAVs † , 2019, Sensors.

[25]  J. Cloutier.  State-dependent Riccati equation techniques: an overview , 1997, Proceedings of the 1997 American Control Conference (Cat. No.97CH36041).

[26]  Saeed Rafee Nekoo,et al.  Digital implementation of a continuous-time nonlinear optimal controller: An experimental study with real-time computations. , 2020, ISA transactions.

[27]  Andrew J. Sinclair,et al.  Nonlinear Control for Spacecraft Pursuit-Evasion Game Using the State-Dependent Riccati Equation Method , 2017, IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems.

[28]  Christian K. Neilsen.  A SUMMARY OF CONTROLLABLE PITCH PROPELLER SYSTEMS EMPLOYED BY THE U. S. NAVY , 1974 .

[29]  Shreeram Marathe.  Leveraging Drone Based Imaging Technology for Pipeline and RoU Monitoring Survey , 2019 .

[30]  S. R. Nekoo,et al.  Finite-time state-dependent Riccati equation for time-varying nonaffine systems: rigid and flexible joint manipulator control. , 2015, ISA transactions.

[31]  Wagner B. Lenz,et al.  Numerical Exploratory Analysis of Dynamics and Control of an Atomic Force Microscopy in Tapping Mode with Fractional Order , 2020 .

[32]  José Manoel Balthazar,et al.  A non-ideally excited pendulum controlled by SDRE technique , 2016 .

[33]  Clément Gosselin,et al.  Dynamic trajectory planning study of planar two-dof redundantly actuated cable-suspended parallel robots , 2015 .

[34]  Alexander L. Fradkov,et al.  Multipendulum mechatronic setup: Design and experiments , 2012 .

[35]  Wen Yang,et al.  Detecting and Positioning of Wind Turbine Blade Tips for UAV-Based Automatic Inspection , 2019, IGARSS 2019 - 2019 IEEE International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium.

[36]  Soumya Ranjan Sahoo,et al.  Robust nonlinear control of a variable-pitch quadrotor with the flip maneuver , 2019, Control Engineering Practice.