Pipe Inspection Robot with FETMX8MM-C SoM

First, produce a background

Underground pipe network is an important part of a city, bear the operation of the daily life of the masses. But if the underground pipe network is "sick", it is difficult to find. If the use of pipeline robots to detect sewage network directly avoid the safety hazards of manual inspection, but also improve the efficiency and accuracy of detection.



a, Drainage pipe functional testing

Mainly for the purpose of checking the drainage function of the pipeline, generally detect the effective water crossing section of the pipe, and compare the actual over-flow of the pipe with the design flow to determine the functional status of the pipeline. For this kind of detected problems can generally be solved by means of daily maintenance and other means.

b, Drainage pipe structural testing

Mainly to check the current structure of pipeline materials for the purpose of testing, such testing mainly understand the structure of the pipeline and connection status, through a comprehensive assessment to determine whether the pipeline on groundwater resources and municipal facilities impact. Such structural problems generally need to be addressed by means of repair when they are detected.

Second, pipeline inspection robot product composition

Includes creepers (wheeled robots), industrial computers and cable cars. Creepers carry high-definition webcams, toxic gas sensors, infrared sensors and other equipment into the pipeline detection inspection, industrial computers are responsible for remote control of crawlers, instant observation of the back-transmitted pipeline internal video, generate reports and storage, cable cars are responsible for providing power and communication cables to the crawlers.

Third, the existing product problems

The whole set of products is very bulky, the appearance of the field is not convenient to carry, so there is a demand is to try to make the whole set of products more portable. Wheeled robots and cable cars themselves don't have much room for portability, and bulky protective industrial computers become the direction of portability (Basic requirements for using ARM: portability, source of demand: outdoor work)

Fourth, product diagram

Embedded control panels replace industrial computers



  • Communication: Communicate with creeper master and webcam via the webport or WiFi.
  • Control: The control instructions for each drive motor are sent remotely to the creeper master via the mesh port or WiFi.
  • Display: Highlight the screen to display video from the webcam.
  • Interaction: Touch, keystrokes, or remote levers for remote control, USB keyboard input required information.
  • Calculation: Local decoding of webcam video, and instant overlay of pipeline information, crawler information and other information to the screen.
  • Forlinx Embedded offers Cortex-M4 platform solutions for pipeline inspection robots - FETMX8MM-C core board, i.MX8MMini quad-core 64-bit processor design, with a wide range of audio interfaces and a variety of peripheral interfaces.

V. FETMX8MM-C core board program



1. Operating system: Android

2. Hardware interface: 1 network port, WIFI, USB interface, storage, IO.

The most important basic function is the 1080P H.264 video decoding 8MM video decoding performance is the best, and the price is also high. If the video compressed by the remote camera slows down or delays in flat-panel decoding, it is easy to lose control of the crawler.