A patrol mobile robot for power transformer substations based on ROS

摘要

In order to release human resources from daily patrol tasks in power transformer substations, a patrol mobile robot is designed to monitor substation facilities and collect information needed, such as gauge reading and surface images. This patrol mobile robot is equipped with a platform, a laser sensor and an industrial personal computer (IPC), and programmed in Robot Operation System (ROS). ROS packages, including communication package, processor package and move control package, are designed in IPC. With a global map of the power transformer substation installed in the robot, once a patrol tasked is received, this patrol mobile robot can choose the shortest route to finish the job. And a motion control method, which uses a laser sensor to navigate, is applied in the robot. Also, an additional Kalman filter is added to the controller to help kick out unusual position information provided by navigation sensors. With all these packages, the robot can receive orders from a client computer, reach the watching points, collect information with the platform and go back automatically.