Investigation of underwater pipeline inspection algorithms onboard the AUV via remote high-performance modeling framework
Automated inspection of the pipeline infrastructure in underwater mining equipment with the help of the AUV requires precise purposeful movement of the robot at a small distance from the inspected object. The exact distance between the pipeline and AUV can be determined on the basis of analysis the visible form of the laser line, with which the robot illuminates the inspected object. This information is then used to organize precise purposeful movement of the robot in the vicinity of inspected object. The scheme of debugging process and implementation features of the navigation and control algorithms designed for inspection purposes are discussed. Debugging is carried out using a distributed modeling system that includes a remote high-performance computing cluster, coupled with the software environment of the navigation and control system (NCS) of the real AUV. The tasks of modeling environment and laser line shape analysis are solved on the side of computing cluster. In the NCS environment operate AUV model and control agents that use the recognition data for the inspection organization. This debugging scheme allows for resource-intensive simulations without making any changes to the software architecture of the NCS. The results of model experiments on the inspection for different placement options of the pipeline on the bottom surface are discussed.