Development of an automatic concrete-tunnel inspection system by an autonomous mobile robot

Abstract

We propose a non-destructive automatic concrete 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 sensors an 6 video cameras. These sensors are mounted on the same plane in the shape of semi-ring. This combined ultrasonic-sensor/video-camera semi-ring (or USVC semi-ring) is mounted on an autonomous mobile robot inspect the concrete-tunnel. Experiment results show that this system can detect the deformed inner-wall at the division of 8 nm, when the robot moves at 20 mm/S.