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

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不足，这些桥梁已经极度恶化。目前，人工非破坏性评估（NDE）是一种识别和预测桥梁早期退化的方法，可以为桥梁修复提供主动干预。然而，现有无损检测技术的交付无法满足日益增长的对高效、经济、安全的检测与评估的需求。因此，桥梁老化对安全的威胁已被认为是一个日益受到全国公众关注的问题。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，以实现桥梁检查和评估的安全、高效和成本效益。该创新方案的典型客户是交通部和桥梁管理承包商，他们寻求一种创新、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查的自主NDE机器人系统。所提出的机器人系统将无损检测技术与机器人技术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。拟议的项目将为设计可持续的国家桥梁基础设施的新机器人技术提供知识和支持工具。将无损检测传感器与机器人传感相结合的两种机器人样机——桥面检测机器人和钢桥结构检测机器人的开发，将为融合异构传感技术准确检测桥梁结构和桥面内部隐藏缺陷提供新的方法。机器人无损检测技术的发展将为安全、高效、低成本的桥梁检测提供新的设计方案。这项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。这将代表土木工程的重大进步，以及我们高速公路基础设施中正在进行的桥梁维护挑战。

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.