Design and Implementation of the Airborne Laser Effector for Autonomous Pipeline Alignment

Abstract. High-accuracy beam pointing is one of the key problems in the airborne laser remote sensing of natural gas pipeline leak. In response to the domestic demand for the long-distance natural pipeline leak detection, this study proposes an airborne laser effector for autonomous pipeline alignment based on CH4/H2S detector. Mainly structured on 2DOF serial mechanism, the device under discussion is designed with a control system operated on IPC and PMAC, followed by the design of hierarchical modular software. Once completed, the device is placed for indoors pointing experiments as well as simulated airborne test. The results show the effector can conduct full-angle scan of the pod area, achieve a static measuring precision of less than 0.4m as an alignment point is about 100 meters from the laser and detect leakage in dynamic simulated experiment, which meets with the design requirements. In other words, both the design and control algorithm are proved to be feasible. The effector holds an important engineering value for solving the problem of remote detection of the natural gas pipeline leakage.