A Preliminary Experimental Study on Control Technology of Pipeline Robots based on Visible Light Communication

Pipeline inspection robots are recently expected to be deployed to pipelines with longer distance and more complex configuration. These robots require high performance in wireless communication among robots and outside. The radio frequency or infrared radiation frequency can be one of the promising wireless communication method, but they would have drawbacks in pipeline environments, such as electromagnetic interference and low energy efficiency. In this study, we focus on visible light communication (VLC), which has a high transmission rate, strong anti-interference capability, and large bandwidth, compared with the above methods. VLC also has an interesting feature that can simultaneously realize data communication and illuminating dark pipeline environment for pipe robot. As a preliminary study of VLC application, we developed a control system based on VLC for a wheeled robot, which includes a VLC transmitter and receiver. The transmitter and receiver can encode and decode the light signals. Finally, we tested the signal waveform of transmitter and receiver, and evaluate the performance of this system in real pipeline robot. The experimental results revealed that the proposed VLC system could achieve a reliable signal transmission and provide well control and illumination for the robot in the pipe.