Design and control of bridge inspection robot system

Abstract

This paper proposes design and control methods for a bridge inspection robot system. A "bridge inspection robot" has been developed with the aim of checking the safety status of a real bridge, gathering accurate data and performing maintenance. The developed robot system is composed of the specially designed car for bridge inspection, the guide rail and the inspection robot. Especially, this paper emphasizes the system integration method to design and control the entire robot system. As a result, this robot has both automatic and manual modes for inspecting a real bridge. In other words, the robot is automatically able to inspect beneath the bridges and manually to inspect them by long-distance user. Also, the users can see the operating conditions of long-distance robot with 3-dimensional graphical user interface. Moreover, the users can feel the operating status of long-distance robot through haptic device.