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

美国有60多万座老化桥梁，由于各种机械和天气条件、维护不足以及检查和评估方面的缺陷，这些桥梁已经遭受了极大的劣化。目前，人工无损评估(NDE)是一种识别和预测早期桥梁劣化的方法，以实现对桥梁修复的主动干预。然而，目前无损检测技术的交付不能满足对高效、成本效益和安全保证的检测和评估日益增长的需求。因此，老化桥梁的安全威胁已被公认为一个日益受到公众关注的国家问题。这个i-Corps项目的目标是最终完成自动化机器人系统并将其商业化，以实现桥梁检测和评估的安全、高效和成本效益。拟议创新的典型客户是交通部和桥梁管理承包商，他们正在寻找一种创造性、高效、低成本和安全的桥梁检测工具。该团队开发了用于桥梁检测的自主无损检测机器人系统。建议的机器人系统将无损检测传感技术与机器人学和自动化科学的最新进展相结合，可以高效、准确地实时检测和评估桥梁。拟议的项目将产生知识和支持工具，为可持续的国家桥梁基础设施设计新的机器人技术。将无损检测传感器与机器人传感相结合的两个机器人原型--桥面检测机器人和钢结构检测机器人的开发，将为融合各种传感技术以准确检测桥梁结构和桥面内部隐藏的缺陷提供新的方法。无损机器人检测的发展将为安全、高效、低成本的桥梁检测提供新的设计。这项拟议的工作将借鉴目前机器人技术的进步，为桥梁维护提供一种新的独特方法。这将是土木工程方面的一项重大进步，也是我们公路基础设施中持续存在的桥梁维修挑战。

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.