Smart Tooling, which is an Interreg Flanders-Netherlands project sponsored by the European Union, focuses on automation in the process industry. The goal is to make maintenance safer, cheaper, cleaner and more efficient by developing new robot prototypes and tools. One of the projects that is funded by Smart Tooling is the Pipe Inspection Robot for AuTonomous Exploration (PIRATE) which is being developed at the Robotics and Mechatronics (RaM) research group of the University of Twente. The goal of the PIRATE robot is to autonomously inspect industrial pipes from the inside. The robot should for instance be able to locate defects and deformations and verifying the wall thickness.
This individual project will focus on optimising and expanding the software that is used for autonomous navigation of the PIRATE robot. In order to achieve this, first the success rate of already implemented tasks will be determined. Thereafter, the aim is to improve upon the success rate of tasks by for instance redesigning control loops which should result in an improved reliability. Finally, new tasks can be implemented such as changing the orientation of the PIRATE in an absolute way with respect to the pipe, driving a horizontal pipe to a lower vertical pipe, upper vertical pipe to horizontal pipe and lower vertical pipe to horizontal pipe. Depending on the time left, another objective could be to perform multiple combinations of tasks after each other.