Visual and 3D mapping for steel bridge inspection using a climbing robot

There are over six hundred thousand bridges in the U.S. which require great amount of human effort along with expensive and specialized equipment for maintenance. Current bridge inspections are manually performed by inspectors which are inefficient and unsafe. This paper presents visual and three dimensional (3D) structure inspection for steel bridges and steel structures using the developed climbing robot. The robot can move freely on steel surface, carry several sensors, and collect data then send to the ground station for real-time monitoring as well as further processing. Steel surface image stitching and 3D map building are conducted to provide a current condition of the structure