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This paper presents results from a series of measurements aimed at mapping, assessing and monitoring underground infrastructure, i.e. the water, sewer, gas, electricity, telecommunications and other supply lines that are vital to modern society. Most of this infrastructure is buried out of sight, in uncertain and highly congested locations and in an aging condition. Mapping, assessing and monitoring this infrastructure can lead to significant improvements in management, repair and growth practices. The sensors include multi-band and multi-static ground penetrating radar (GPR), and underground flow and condition sensing of water systems, including acoustic leak detection, linked by wireless and high-speed fiber-optic networks. Ground penetrating radar is one method available for locating underground utilities, but becomes challenging in urban environments due to the congestion of piping and difficulties with GPS-denied position registration. Ongoing efforts to overcome these challenges with advanced GPR techniques and the integration into a mapping database are presented, including results from field tests with pre and post construction ground truth evaluations. Data telemetry from buried infrastructure for IOT-type monitoring is hampered by the high-attenuation rate for wireless electromagnetic transmission. Results from experiments aimed at low-speed magnetic signaling with potential for high penetration through soils are presented.
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This content will become publicly available on September 9, 2026
Monitoring Structures with Teams of Mobile Robots
This paper addresses the problem of monitoring structures with potential emergent damage through adaptive sensing provided by teams of mobile robots. Advantages of mobile robot teams for structural health monitoring include: 1. Multiple views of a given structure, 2. Adaptive movements that focus attention in response to observed conditions,3. Heterogeneous sensing and movement, and 4. Federated health monitoring and prognosis assessment through networked sharing and processing of information. Towards this end three cases of the use of mobile robot teams will be presented: 1. Heterogeneous robot teams for home and small building maintenance – Identifying, diagnosing and mitigating damage to homes and small buildings is a vexing set of problems for the owners. As an aid small controlled bristlebots and quadruped robot dogs (QRDs) carry sensors throughout a small building, assess conditions, provide prognoses and networked links to repair options; 2. Culverts are primary components of stormwater and flood prevention infrastructure. Inspecting small culverts is difficult for humans and large culverts are accessible but dangerous due to issues of confined spaces. Low-cost mobile robots have emerged as a competitive inspection option for accessible culverts with straight or short runs that permit wireless telemetry. Longer culverts and those with bends, branches and drop inlets pose challenges to the telemetry. Teams of robots extend the range of inspection through multi-hop video and control telemetry; 3. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a method of sensing subsurface infrastructure conditions with high-frequency electromagnetic waves. Conventional GPRs operate in a suboptimal monostatic or bistatic mode, are tedious to operate and have limitations in sensing congested utility subsurface conditions. Coordinated multistatic ground penetrating radar operated with mobile robot teams alleviates some of these concerns and provide better subsurface assessments with automated methods that focus attention on subsurface features of interest. Results from laboratory and field tests of these robot teams, as well as organizing principles of control and automated information processing are presented.
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- PAR ID:
- 10643296
- Editor(s):
- Chang, Fu-Kuo; Guemes, Alfredo
- Publisher / Repository:
- DEStech Publications, Inc.
- Date Published:
- ISBN:
- 978-1-60595-699-2
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- robot, team, inspection, swarm, structure, culvert
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Location:
- Stanford University
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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