A Practical Climbing Robot for Steel Bridge Inspection
Son Thanh Nguyen, Anh Q. Pham, Cadence Motley, Hung Manh La
Abstract
The advanced robotic and automation (ARA) lab has developed and successfully implemented a design inspired by many of the various cutting edge steel inspection robots to date. The combination of these robots concepts into a unified design came with its own set of challenges since the parameters for these features sometimes conflicted. An extensive amount of design and analysis work was performed by the ARA lab in order to find a carefully tuned balance between the implemented features on the ARA robot and general functionality. Having successfully managed to implement this conglomerate of features represents a breakthrough to the industry of steel inspection robots as the ARA lab robot is capable of traversing most complex geometries found on steel structures while still maintaining its ability to efficiently travel along these structures; a feat yet to be done until now.