I-Corps Teams: Development and Commercialization of Bridge Inspection Robotic Systems

I-Corps 团队：桥梁检测机器人系统的开发和商业化

• 批准号: 1535716
• 负责人: Hung La
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Board of Regents, NSHE, obo University of Nevada, Reno
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-04-01 至 2015-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1535716&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Corps; Teams; Development; Commercialization; Bridge

There are over 600,000 aging bridges in the United States which have been subjected to extreme deterioration due to various mechanical and weather conditions, inadequate maintenance, and deficiencies in inspection and evaluation. Currently, manual Non-destructive evaluation (NDE) is a way to identify and predict early-stage bridge deterioration to enable proactive interventions for repair for bridges. However, the delivery of the current NDE technologies cannot meet the increasing demands for highly-efficient, cost-effective and safety-guaranteed inspection and evaluation. Hence the threat to safety of aging bridges has been recognized as a growing problem of national concern to the general public. The objective of this I-Corps project is to finalize and commercialize automated robotics systems for safety, efficient and cost effective of bridge inspection and evaluation. The typical customers of the proposed innovation are the Departments of Transportation and bridge management contractors seeking for a creative, efficient, low cost and safe bridge inspection tool.This team has developed autonomous NDE robotic systems for bridge inspections. The proposed robotic system integrates NDE sensing technologies with recent advances in robotics and automation sciences that can inspect and evaluate the bridge efficiently and accurately in real time manner. The proposed project will generate knowledge and enabling tools for designing new robotic technologies for sustainable national bridge infrastructure. The development of two robotic prototypes, bridge deck inspection robot and steel bridge structure inspection robot, that combines NDE sensors with robotic sensing will provide new methodologies to fuse heterogeneous sensing technologies for accurately detecting hidden defects inside bridge structure and deck. The development of the non-destructive robotic inspections will provide new designs for safe, efficient and less costly bridge inspection. The proposed work will draw from current robotics advancements to provide a new and unique approach to bridge maintenance. This will represent a major advancement within civil engineering and the on-going bridge maintenance challenges within our highway infrastructure.

美国有超过 60 万座老化桥梁，由于各种机械和天气条件、维护不足以及检查和评估的缺陷，这些桥梁已经遭受了极度恶化。目前，手动无损评估（NDE）是一种识别和预测桥梁早期恶化的方法，以便能够主动干预桥梁修复。然而，现有无损检测技术的交付无法满足日益增长的高效、低成本和安全保障的检验和评估的需求。因此，老化桥梁对安全的威胁已成为全国公众日益关注的问题。该 I-Corps 项目的目标是最终确定自动化机器人系统并将其商业化，以实现安全、高效且具有成本效益的桥梁检查和评估。拟议创新的典型客户是交通部门和桥梁管理承包商，寻求一种创造性、高效、低成本和安全的桥梁检查工具。该团队开发了用于桥梁检查的自主无损检测机器人系统。所提出的机器人系统将无损检测传感技术与机器人和自动化科学的最新进展相结合，可以实时高效、准确地检查和评估桥梁。拟议的项目将产生知识和支持工具，用于为可持续的国家桥梁基础设施设计新的机器人技术。桥面检查机器人和钢桥结构检查机器人这两种机器人原型的开发，将无损检测传感器与机器人传感相结合，将为融合异构传感技术提供新的方法，以准确检测桥梁结构和桥面内部隐藏的缺陷。无损机器人检测的发展将为安全、高效和低成本的桥梁检测提供新的设计。拟议的工作将借鉴当前机器人技术的进步，为桥梁维护提供一种新的、独特的方法。这将代表土木工程领域的重大进步以及我们高速公路基础设施中持续存在的桥梁维护挑战。