Research on Navigation and Location System of Inspection Robot for Urban Utility Tunnel

The inspection robot is suitable for the automatic safety inspection of utility tunnel with multiple hazards and complex spatial structure. Based on the principle of three-point location, this paper proposes a location method which combines two-dimensional lidar and reflective stickers. By reading all reflective stickers in the utility tunnel environment, the current position of the robot can be determined in real time, and it can be mapped in the robot map of the utility tunnel. The effectiveness of the method is verified by experiments, and the problem of automatic navigation of the robot in the utility tunnel is well solved. Besides, the robot adopts Christie’s crawler type. Through the design of terrain adaptability and vertical obstacle experiment, it is verified that the robot has good motion performance and can adapt to complex terrain conditions in the utility tunnel.