Structural inspection robot for displacement measurement

As civil structures are exposed to various external loads such as traffic, wind, and wave loads, it is essential to inspect structural conditions in every moment. Especially the structural displacement, which is one of the important categories of structural health monitoring (SHM), must be estimated to inspect the structural safety. In the previous study, therefore, a structural inspection robot was proposed to directly measure the structural displacement with high accuracy and low cost. The proposed robot is composed of two screens facing with each other, each with one or two lasers, and a camera. By cascading multiple modules, the inspection robot system can estimate the displacement of the entire structure. Although the proposed robot can estimate translational and rotational displacements in 6-DOF, the measurable range is limited due to the limited screen size. To solve this problem, structural inspection robot with visually servoed manipulator is introduced. In this paper, the architecture of structural inspection robot is described in detail and the actuated structural inspection robot is also introduced briefly.