A Climbing Robot for Steel Bridge Inspection

As an effort of automating the bridge inspection process, this paper presents a new development of an adaptable tank-like robot, which can climb on steel structures to collect data and perform inspection. While most current steel climbing mobile robots are designed to work on flat steel surface, our proposed tank-like robot design is capable of climbing on different steel structural shapes (e.g., cylinder, cube) by using reciprocating mechanism and magnetic roller-chains. The developed robot can pass through the joints and transition from one surface to the other (e.g., from flat to curving surfaces). A prototype robot integrating multiple sensors (hall-effects, IR, IMU, Eddy current and cameras), has been developed by coping with variety of strict concerns including tight dimension, effective adhesive and climbing adaptation. Rigorous analysis of robot kinematics, adhesive force, sliding and turn-over failure and motor power has been conducted to certify the stability of the proposed design. The theory calculations can serve as an useful framework for designing future steel climbing robots. The cameras and Eddy current sensor is integrated on Robot for visual and in-depth fatigue crack inspection of steel structures. Experimental results and field deployments on more than twenty steel bridges confirm the adhesive, climbing, inspection capability of the robot. Video of this deployment can be seen in this link: https://youtu.be/1Wl9Trd3EoM .