Study On Path Planning For Four-wheel Independent Controlling Of Explosion-proof Inspection Robot

Inspection robots have been widely utilized for industry and social service in daily life with the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology.Notably,in the energy and chemical industries,since the safety accidents caused by dangerous gas leakage increase rapidly,the explosion-proof inspection robot started to gain extensive attention from the researchers.Accordingly,the wheeled robot with a four-wheel independent control system has become one of the hot spots of research due to its characteristics of excellent robust controllability,high flexibility and strong mobility regarding the high-risk environments.When the explosion-proof inspection robot performs the inspection task,it plans an overall optimal path between the starting and target point without collision based on the known environmental information.Meanwhile,the sensors carried by the robot receive the information of the surrounding environment in real time,and plan the local path for the robot to move to the target point and avoid obstacles.Therefore,the research of path planning algorithm for four-wheel independent controlling of explosion-proof inspection robot displays significant value in both theory and application.Based on the actual practical scenarios of inspection work in natural gas regulating station,this paper investigates the path planning technology of the independently designed four-wheel independent controlling of explosion-proof inspection robot.The main contents include the following aspects:Firstly,this paper analyzes the kinematics of the four-wheel independent controlling of explosion-proof inspection robot,and establishes the kinematics model of the robot.The Gazebo simulation tool on the Robot Operating System(ROS)was applied to build the simulation model of the four-wheel independent controlling of explosion-proof Robot.Moreover,the Pure Pursuit algorithm was employed to analyze the path tracking of the simulation model based on the robot kinematics model.Secondly,this paper reviews the global path planning of robot autonomous inspection and the heuristic search theory of classical A* algorithm is elaborated in detail.On this basis,an improved A* algorithm combining arbitrary direction search algorithm and node filtering search algorithm is proposed to reduce the number of corners and improve the computational efficiency of the algorithm.This algorithm offers benefits in the global planning of the autonomous inspection with the decreased number of turns in the global path and the enhanced searching efficiency for the optimal path.Then,based on global static planning,this paper investigates the local path planning problem of robot autonomous inspection to meet the needs of the robot for real-time obstacle avoidance.Based on the motion characteristics of the robot with four-wheel independent controlling,the running trajectory and efficiency of the robot in the traditional TEB algorithm were optimized.The laser odometer model was introduced to correct the real-time error of the trajectory,which improved the performance of the trajectory drift with the accumulation of positioning error.Consequently,the autonomous inspection control process and algorithm of the explosion-proof robot are designed to meet the task requirements of autonomous inspection in natural gas regulating station.Finally,this paper describes the hardware and software platform of the ROS-based four-wheel independent controlling of the explosion-proof robot.By applying the improved path planning algorithm to the robot experimental platform,the experiments of path planning and autonomous inspection of the explosion-proof inspection robot were completed in the experimental environment of the natural gas pressure regulating station.The experiments verify the feasibility of the proposed path planning algorithm for four-wheel independent controlling of explosion-proof robot in realistic scenarios.