Practical Applications of HORNET to Inspect Walls of Structures

Abstract

[abstFig src='/00280003/07.jpg' width=""300"" text='Photograph of HORNET catching onto a wall' ] During the high economic growth period in Japan, the development of new infrastructures was promoted and numerous bridges and buildings were constructed. Currently, the walls of bridges and buildings are inspected manually. This manual inspection process is expensive and time-consuming, and inspectors may be placed in dangerous situation. In this study, a robot that moves stably on a wall while maintaining a distance from the wall was developed to enable low-cost, safe inspection. Several characteristics of the robot were measured, and the possibility of using the robot in practical applications was assessed based on the measurement results.