Influence of Computer Vision and IoT for Pipeline Inspection-A Review

In recent years transmission is becoming one of the demanding ways of mobility all over the world. There are various pipeline systems built to carry water, gas and sewage water to reach out every nook and corner of the state. Unfortunately most of these resources are lost during the transmission only, due to the damages found in the pipelines. The advent of Computer Vision and Internet of Things (IoT) over the years has increased the scope of automation in every field. Being influenced by that, the existing inspection systems are getting smarter day by day. This paper gives an overall view about the existing techniques used in identification of the defects occurring in the pipelines. It discusses about the existing image processing techniques used to detect the defects present in the pipelines as quoted from various papers. It also briefs about the various sensors that are being used in the current scenarios for the continuous monitoring of the pipelines thus describing its pros and cons. Finally, the limitations of the existing methods and the scope of research in this domain have been outlined.

I. Introduction

Transmission of fluids along the pipelines and tunnels is the one common mode that is being found everywhere in our cities. The pipelines carry water, sewage wastes, oil and gases. The maintenance of these pipelines in a regular basis has many issues in real time such as (i) some tunnels allow the human intervention whereas in a closed pipe it is not possible to check for disparities, (ii) damaged or broken sewage pipes and flow of waste water into roadsides and, (iii) leakage of water pipes. Due to stagnant water, human health is affected and the wastage of water leads to water scarcity.