Autonomous navigation of steel bridge inspection robots is essential for proper maintenance. The majority of existing robotic solutions for bridge inspection require human intervention to assist in the control and navigation. In this paper, a control system framework has been proposed for a previously designed ARA robot [1], which facilitates autonomous real-time navigation and minimizes human involvement. The mechanical design and control framework of ARA robot enables two different configurations, namely the mobile and inch-worm transformation. In addition, a switching control was developed with 3D point clouds of steel surfaces as the input which allows the robot to switch between mobile and inch-worm transformation. The surface availability algorithm (considers plane, area, and height) of the switching control enables the robot to perform inch-worm jumps autonomously. Themobiletransformationallows the robot to move on continuous steel surfaces and perform visual inspection of steel bridge structures. Practical experiments on actual steel bridge structures highlight the effective performance of ARA robot with the proposed control framework for autonomous navigation during a visual inspection of steel bridges.
University of Nevada, Reno（内华达大学里诺分校）；University of Technology Sydney（悉尼科技大学）
This paper presents visual and 3D structure inspection for steel structures and bridges using a developed climbing robot. The robot can move freely on a steel surface, carry sensors, collect data and then send to the ground station in real time for monitoring as well as further processing. Steel surface image stitching and 3D map building are conducted to provide a current condition of the structure. Also, a computer vision-based method is implemented to detect surface defects on stitched images. The effectiveness of the climbing robot's inspection is tested in multiple circumstances to ensure…
Autonomous navigation is essential for steel bridge inspection robot to monitor and maintain the working condition of steel bridges. Majority of existing robotic solutions requires human support to navigate the robot doing the inspection. In this paper, a navigation framework is proposed for ARA robot [1], [2] to run on mobile mode. In this mode, the robot needs to cross and inspect all the available steel bars. The most significant contributions of this research are four algorithms, which can process the depth data, segment it into clusters, estimate the boundaries, construct a graph to repre…
Autonomous navigation of steel bridge inspection robots is essential for proper maintenance. The majority of existing robotic solutions for steel bridge inspection requires human intervention to assist in the control and navigation. In this paper, a control and navigation framework has been proposed for the steel bridge inspection robot developed by the Advanced Robotics and Automation (ARA)to facilitate autonomous real-time navigation and minimize human intervention. The ARA robot is designed to work in two modes: mobile and inch-worm. The robot uses mobile mode when moving on a plane surface…
University of Nevada, Reno（内华达大学里诺分校）；Northeastern University（东北大学）
This paper presents a novel design of a multi-directional bicycle robot, which targets inspecting general ferromagnetic structures including complex-shaped structures. The locomotion concept is based on arranging two magnetic wheels in a bicycle-like configuration with two independent steering actuators. This configuration allows the robot to possess multi-directional mobility. An additional free joint helps the robot naturally adapt to non-flat and complex surfaces of steel structures. The robot has the biggest advantage to be mechanically simple with high mobility. Besides, the robot is equi…
Motivated by a high demand for automated inspection of civil infrastructure, this work presents a new design and development of a tank-like robot for structural health monitoring. Unlike most existing magnetic wheeled mobile robot designs, which may be suitable for climbing on flat steel surface, our proposed tank-like robot design uses reciprocating mechanism and roller-chains to make it capable of climbing on different structural shapes (e.g., cylinder, cube) with coated or non-coated steel surfaces. The proposed robot is able to transition from one surface to the other (e.g., from flat surf…
University of Nevada, Reno（内华达大学里诺分校）；Rutgers University（罗格斯大学）；Dong-A University（东亚大学）
The threat to safety of aging bridges has been recognized as a critical concern to the general public due to the poor condition of many bridges in the U.S. Currently, the bridge inspection is conducted manually, and it is not efficient to identify bridge condition deterioration in order to facilitate implementation of appropriate maintenance or rehabilitation procedures. In this paper, we report a new development of the autonomous mobile robotic system for bridge deck inspection and evaluation. The robot is integrated with several nondestructive evaluation (NDE) sensors and a navigation contro…
Bridge condition assessment is important to maintain the quality of highway roads for public transport. Bridge deterioration with time is inevitable due to aging material, environmental wear and in some cases, inadequate maintenance. Non-destructive evaluation (NDE) methods are preferred for condition assessment for bridges, concrete buildings, and other civil structures. Some examples of NDE methods are ground penetrating radar (GPR), acoustic emission, and electrical resistivity (ER). NDE methods provide the ability to inspect a structure without causing any damage to the structure in the pr…
We study the problem of infrastructure inspection using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in box girder bridge environments. We consider a scenario where the UAV needs to fully inspect box girder bridges and localize along the bridge surface when standard methods like GPS and optical flow are denied. Our method for overcoming the difficulties of box girder bridges consist of creating local navigation routines, a supervisor, and a planner. The local navigation routines use two 2D Lidars for girder and column flight. For switching between local navigation routines we implement a supervisor which …
Over 600,000 bridges in the U.S. must be inspected every two years to identify flaws, defects, or potential problems that may need follow-up maintenance. Bridge inspection has adopted unmanned aerial vehicles (or drones) for improving safety, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Although drones can operate in an autonomous mode, keeping inspectors in the loop is critical for complex tasks in bridge inspection. Therefore, inspectors need to develop the skill and confidence to operate drones in their jobs. This paper presents the design and development of a virtual reality-based training and asse…
GATSBI: An Online GTSP-Based Algorithm for Targeted Surface Bridge Inspection and Defect Detection
National Institute of Standards and Technology（美国国家标准与技术研究院）；Rice University（莱斯大学）；Colorado State University（科罗拉多州立大学）；University of Colorado（科罗拉多大学）；National Research Institute for Metals（国立金属材料研究所）
Indian Institute of Technology（印度理工学院）；Aachen University（亚琛大学）
This literature review investigates how robots can be used for the maintenance of manmade structures, such as pipes, reinforced concrete decks, and space stations as a sampling of the broad spectrum of robotic non-destructive testing (NDT) applications. Robotic NDT can be used to find plaque in pipes, corrosion in steel buildings, and impact damage in space stations, which would normally be invisible to the eye. After inspection, the inspected material is preserved in its original condition. The paper's structure is as follows: first, the definition of NDT is elaborated upon with the discussio…
Bridge the Gap: Enhancing Quadruped Locomotion with Vertical Ground Perturbations
Technical University of Darmstadt（德累斯顿技术大学）；Institute of Sports Science and Centre of Cognitive Science（体育科学学院和认知科学中心）；Intelligent Autonomous Systems group（智能自主系统小组）；Department of Computer Science（计算机科学系）；Measurement and Sensor Technology Group（测量与传感器技术小组）；Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology（电气工程与信息科技系）；Institute of Structural Mechanics and Design（结构力学与设计研究所）；German Research Center for AI (DFKI)（德国人工智能研究中心）
UAVs have been widely used in visual inspections of buildings, bridges and other structures. In either outdoor autonomous or semi-autonomous flights missions strong GPS signal is vital for UAV to locate its own positions. However, strong GPS signal is not always available, and it can degrade or fully loss underneath large structures or close to power lines, which can cause serious control issues or even UAV crashes. Such limitations highly restricted the applications of UAV as a routine inspection tool in various domains. In this paper a vision-model-based real-time self-positioning method is …
University of Rijeka（里耶卡大学）；University of Southern Denmark（南丹麦大学）
The application of autonomous UAVs to infrastructure inspection tasks provides benefits in terms of operation time reduction, safety, and cost-effectiveness. This paper presents trajectory planning for three-dimensional autonomous multi-UAV volume coverage and visual inspection of infrastructure based on the Heat Equation Driven Area Coverage (HEDAC) algorithm. The method generates trajectories using a potential field and implements distance fields to prevent collisions and to determine UAVs' camera orientation. It successfully achieves coverage during the visual inspection of complex structur…
Spiking Neural Network Actor-Critic Proximal Policy Optimization Control for Autonomous UAV Navigation Through Constrained Openings in Civil Infrastructure and Buildings
Alma Mater Europaea University（欧洲阿尔马马特大学）；AGH University of Krakow（克拉科夫AGH科技大学）
