Automatic concrete tunnel inspection robot system

Abstract

Abstract This paper describes the development of an automatic concrete tunnel inspection system by an autonomous mobile robot. This work was motivated by the accidents in recent years that were caused by falling parts of the inner wall of concrete tunnels. This brought about serious damage to national property and led to the great concern throughout the whole society. Here, we proposed a non-destructive automatic tunnel inspection method. In this method, we aim to inspect the tunnel automatically and completely at high speed by using non-destructive sensors. For the non-destructive sensors, we employ 24 ultrasonic range sensors and six video cameras. These sensors are mounted on the same plane in the shape of a semi-ring. This ultrasonic range sensor video camera semi-ring is called a URS/VC semi-ring. This URS/VC semi-ring is mounted on an autonomous mobile robot to inspect the concrete tunnel. Experiment results show that this system can detect deformed inner walls at divisions of 14 mm when the robot moves at 20 mm/s. Keywords: Autonomous mobile robotoncrete tunnel inspectionURS/VC semi-ringinspection robot systemextended EERUF algorithm.