Autonomous Mobile Robot System for Monitoring and Control of Penetration during Fixed Pipes Welding

In order to obtain sound welded joints in the welding of horizontal fixed pipes, it is important to control the back bead width in the first pass. However, it is difficult to obtain optimum back bead width, because the proper welding conditions change with welding position. In this paper, in order to fully automatize the welding of fixed pipes, a new method is developed to control the back bead width with monitoring the shape and dimensions of the molten pool from the reverse side by autonomous mobile robot system. This robot has spherical shape so as to move in a complex route including curved pipe, elbow joint and so on. It has also a camera to observe inner surface of pipe and recognize a route in which the robot moves. The robot moves to welding point in the pipe, and monitors the reverse side shape of molten pool during welding. The host computer processes the images of molten pool acquired by the robot vision system, and calculates the optimum welding conditions to realize adaptive control of welding. As a result of the welding control experiments, the effectiveness of this system for the penetration control of fixed pipes is demonstrated.