Evaluation of Battery-free UHF-RFID Sensor Wireless Signals for In-pipe
Robotic Applications
Abstract
A reliable robotic localization method is required for comparing
three-dimensional pipe maps obtained via laser scans at various times
for accurately monitoring the evolution of internal pipe surface
defects. Existing robotic localization methods have limitations when
visual features vanish due to changes in the pipe environment or when
encoder data becomes highly uncertain due to long-distance robotic
traverses. To address this issue, we leverage battery-free ultra-high
frequency radio frequency identification (UHF-RFID) sensors for
transmitting wireless signals to a two-antenna reader integrated mobile
robotic system. Although there are literature on the investigation of
UHFRFID behaviors and their applications in indoor environments,
analysis of the same for in-pipe scenarios was not well studied. In this
paper, we evaluate the UHF-RFID sensor signals inside a field extracted
pipeline. Firstly, we examine the UHF-RFID sensor signal patterns
through repeated robotic scans. Secondly, we examine how the placement
of UHF-RFID reader antennas affects the transmission of UHF-RFID sensor
signals, as well as we study the effects of robotic traverse direction
and speed on the UHF-RFID wireless signals. Finally, we examine whether
identical UHF-RFID sensors generate the same pattern when placed in a
pipeline. Overall, the experimental evaluation demonstrates that the use
of two-antenna UHF-RFID readers can ameliorate the capabilities of
robotic localization in the pipeline.