PIPELINE INSPECTION PIGLETS

摘要

For pipeline inspection, a small, untethered capsule (a "piglet") (12) images from within a pipeline (32). The capsule (12) is small enough that rotation about any of three orthogonal axes while within the pipeline (32) is possible. Movement both along the pipeline (32) and perpendicular to the longitudinal axis is possible. To assure images of the pipeline (32) without viewing gaps, the field of view for imaging surrounds the capsule (12) without a gap. Given the possible rotation and translation, the captured images may be motion compensated (52) to provide oriented images of a length of the pipeline (32).