preprints.org > engineering > electrical and electronic engineering > doi: 10.20944/preprints202411.0386.v1

Preprint Article Version 1 This version is not peer-reviewed

Version 1 : Received: 5 November 2024 / Approved: 6 November 2024 / Online: 6 November 2024 (16:48:41 CET)

In today’s expanding cities, pipeline networks are becoming an essential part of the industrial infrastructure. Monitoring these pipelines autonomously is becoming increasingly important. Inspecting pipelines for cracks is one specific task that poses a huge burden on humans. Undetected cracks may pose multi-dimensional risks. In this paper, we introduce the Pipeline Leak Identification Emergency Robot Swarm (PLIERS) system; an industrial system that deploys Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and Neural Network technologies to detect cracks in emptied water and sewage pipelines. In PLIERS, a swarm of robots inspect emptied pipelines from the inside to detect cracks, collect images of them, and register their locations. When the images are taken, they are fed into a cloud-based module for analysis by a convolutional neural network (CNN). CNN is used to detect cracks and identify their severity. Through extensive training and testing, the CNN model performance showed promising scores for accuracy (between 80% and 90%), recall (at least 95%), precision (at least 95%), and F1 (at least 96%). Additionally, through the careful design of a prototype for a water/sewage pipeline structure with several types of cracks, the robots used managed to exchange information among themselves and convey crack images to the cloud-based server for further analysis. PLIERS is a system that deploys trendy technologies to detect and recognize cracks in pipeline grids. It adds to the efforts of improving instrumentation and measurement approaches by using robots, sensory, IoT principles, and the efficient analysis of CNN’s.

Automation; Internet of Things; Machine Learning; Convolutional Neural Network; Industrial Application; Pipeline Crack Detection

Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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