Autonomous Flexible Docking System for Single-post Steel Pipe Towers Based on Visual Navigation

Currently, the docking of single-column steel pipe towers in power systems mainly relies on manual implementation, which has a high risk factor and is time-consuming and laborious. This paper aims to research the autonomous docking technology of single-column steel pipe tower for this specific technical condition and environment, and proposes a vision-based navigation-based hydraulically driven autonomous flexible docking system for single-column steel pipe tower. The single-post steel pipe tower autonomous flexible docking system uses a microcontroller that enables autonomous positioning and docking through image tracking control, and the computational performance of the microcontroller makes it easier for technicians to operate. In this paper, numerical simulations and hardware tests are carried out for the docking of a single column steel pipe tower in the two-dimensional plane. The results show that the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by controlling the motion of the steel pipe tower assembly at the docking interface using a small steel pipe tower model with air bearings in the two-dimensional plane with a minimum propellant thruster and a small control moment gyroscope.