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Title: Control Framework for a Hybrid-steel Bridge Inspection Robot
Autonomous navigation of steel bridge inspection robots are essential for proper maintenance. 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. The mobile transformation allows 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 visual inspection of steel bridges.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1846513
NSF-PAR ID:
10231064
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)
Page Range / eLocation ID:
2585 to 2591
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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