RoboNews  

15th Sep 2007:

Multi Robot underground Pipeline Explorer being developed at Louisiana State University

The computer science department of Louisiana State University is developing completely Autonomous Pipeline Exploring Robots (APER). This research project will be first of its kind, which will target the undiscovered area of underground pipelines.  Under the guidance of Dr.S.S.Iyengar, a team of RRL researchers are investigating and have come up with a unique prototype.  The APER will be capable of maneuvering pipelines with diameter of 4-6 inches wide easily. APER will have the ability to traverse Tees and elbows, detect any anomalies and using APER data, a complete map of underground pipeline will be drawn.

The APER project is managed and funded by the Robotics Research Laboratory and the Computer Science department of LSU. This Pipeline Explorer is now undergoing rigorous testing under different conditions.

“Most of the pipelines be it gas or sewage or water requires manual maintenance operations, so we are focusing on completely autonomous maintenance operations by employing these cheap tiny robots”, says Jong Hoon Kim, the  Chief Architect of APER.

“The basic theme of our research is to employ many robots to map the pipeline simultaneously which will result in efficient mapping and faster search operations.

Deploying 100’s of cheap tiny robots will generate enormous amount of data which will be processed by the base station”, says Bharat Narahari, principle investigator of APER.

 “We always believed in innovation and creativity, and our research will lead to a new area of underground robotics which is still untouched,” said Iyengar.  “Future of underground pipe maintenance will be robots, which will not only reduce cost but, increase efficiency and will lead to new application incorporation this technology.”

S.S. Iyengar is currently the Roy Paul Daniels Professor and Chairman of the Computer Science Department at Louisiana State University. He heads the Wireless Sensor Networks Laboratory and the Robotics Research Laboratory at LSU. He has been involved with research in high-performance algorithms, data structures, sensor fusion, data mining, and intelligent systems since receiving his Ph.D. degree in 1974 from MSU, USA.

For more information visit: http://bit.csc.lsu.edu/rrl

Robotics Research Laboratory
298 Coates Hall,
Louisiana State Univeristy,
Baton Rouge, LA 70803.
Phone: (225) - 578 - 1252
Fax     : (225) - 578 - 1465                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  
E-mail: rrl@bit.csc.lsu.edu