Robotic probe positioning system for structural health monitoring

Abstract

Structural health Monitoring (SHM) is a very critical component for sustainable civil and mechanical structures in modern urban settings. The sky-scrappers and huge bridges in modern metropolis today are essential aspects of the prosperity and development of a country but at the same time they present a great challenge in terms of maintaining and sustaining the structures in a good health. Due to the complex designs of these structures, it is typically very dangerous to do SHM tasks through human personnel. Deployment of a monitoring team with various forms of equipment and scaffolding accompanied with their hoisting machines becomes extremely exorbitant for the maintenance and planning of the structures causing unnecessary cost-spill on other areas of the available budget. In this paper, a robotic system is presented that can perform a coarse level of scan of a tall building using drones and the probe deployment robots (PDR). The drones provide a rough estimate of the location of possible defect or abnormality and PDR inspects the anomaly more closely. In addition, the coarse information about a possible defect can also help in deploying other means of inspection in a much lower cost since the whole structure needs not to be inspected.