RoboPET: a semi-autonomous robot for hazardous inspections (original) (raw)

Small robots can be used for inspection in hazardous environments, such as oil rigs or chemical plants. A small autonomous robot, called RoboPET, was developed for remote operations: the robot was designed in an integrated manner and solutions for its mechanical parts, controls, drivers, interfacing, and sensing have been generated. This paper describes all these aspects of the RoboPET project, presenting real tests with the robot. The problem of collision avoidance for a mobile robot in an unknown environment is also discussed; this problem is handled using active vision to identify several features on imagery captured by the robot. When a possible obstacle is identified, the robot analyzes the obstacle using a Bayesian network for inferences. A Bayesian network that can run in real-time was constructed; this network uses Adaptive Conditioning, an anytime algorithm for inference with Bayesian networks. The control scheme uses the inferences generated by the Bayesian network to send...