Development of underwater inspection system for dam inspection: Results of field tests

Shimono, Soji; Toyama, Shigeki; Nishizawa, Uichi

doi:10.1109/oceans.2016.7761224

Cited by 12 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Given this background, Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has played an important role in leading the development of inspection systems and robots for infrastructure, including dams, in recent years. Several researchers have developed underwater robotic systems for dam inspection (Shimono et al, ; Sugimoto et al, ).…”

Section: Outline Of the Proposed Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to visual inspection, it might be possible for AUVs to perform underwater tasks that require physical contact and which generate a reaction force to AUVs. For instance, AUVs might be able to work using tools such as wall thickness gauges, sounding hammers, and cleaning brushes as ROVs (Shimono et al, 2015) (Shimono et al, 2015(Shimono et al, , 2016Sugimoto et al, 2017).…”

Section: Applications For Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and Remotementioning

confidence: 99%

“…A straightforward method is to push a robot against an object to be inspected using force generated by the thrusters. Shimono et al () developed an unmanned surface vehicle and an ROV that were mutually connected by a cable to estimate the ROV's position easily by the cable length and the position of the surface vehicle based on a global navigation satellite system (GNSS)/inertial navigation system. The ROV has two arms to maintain its relative position with respect to the dam surface.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Development of dam inspection robot with negative pressure effect plate

Sakagami

Yumoto²,

Takebayashi

et al. 2019

Journal of Field Robotics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper describes the development of an underwater robot that performs visual inspection while making mechanical contact with a dam surface by a pulling force generated from thrusters with negative pressure effect plates. In general, small and lightweight remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) have low‐power thrusters. Their positioning performance is inferior with respect to external disturbances. Moreover, it is difficult for untrained operators to control the ROV position to check and inspect dams visually. A negative pressure effect plate attached to a thruster produces negative pressure that maintains mechanical contact between the robot and a dam wall surface and ensures stable robot motion on a dam surface to acquire clear continuous images. As described herein, we theoretically investigate the negative pressure effect plate characteristics and experimentally measure the force generated by the pressure difference. Results show that the force of a thruster with the effect plate is five times greater than the nominal thrust force provided by the thruster alone. Based on those results, we designed and developed the underwater robot with the negative pressure effect plates for dam inspection. Moreover, we conducted an experiment in a water tank and a field test at Shorenji Dam, Mie‐prefecture, Japan. The experimentally obtained results indicated that the negative pressure effective plate is effective at generating sufficient force and at realizing stable robot motion on the dam surface. Results demonstrate that the developed robot acquired clear images of the dam surface continuously with no sophisticated operator or controller.

show abstract

Section: Outline Of the Proposed Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Applications For Autonomous Underwater Vehicles and Remotementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Development of dam inspection robot with negative pressure effect plate

Sakagami

Yumoto²,

Takebayashi

et al. 2019

Journal of Field Robotics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The inspection demonstration at the actual dam using the dam inspection system was conducted at the Yasaka dam, Japan [7]. The dam is a concrete gravity dam that was constructed in 1921 with a capacity of 112,000,000 m 3 and with a maximum wall height of 120 m. The test bed was deployed on the dam lake, and the human interface unit was set on the boat.…”

Section: B Inspection Demonstration At the Actual Dammentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluation of Under water Positioning by Hanged ROV from USV

Shimono¹

2017

IJMO

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this paper, the position measurement method of an underwater inspection system by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) hanging from an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) is evaluated. Since the ROV goes directly under the USV, its underwater position can be estimated from its depth and the position of the USV. On the other hand, the horizontal position difference between both vehicles affects estimation accuracy. Thus, the position difference when the system is in a water current and when it is moving was evaluated by a simulation. As a result, in low flow rate, the difference falls within the range considered to be practical. In addition, it is confirmed by simulation and experiment that the positional difference during movement can be reduced by the moving method using both vehicles thrusters. Then, an inspection demonstration was carried out. Even in the real environment, the effect that the hanged ROV is located directly below the USV is confirmed and vertically inspection was easily performed.

show abstract

“…is system dropped a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) into water by a hoist system from a boat and implemented an "Water Loupe" visual module to improve the visibility in murky water. Shimono developed an underwater inspection system which consists of an unmanned surface vehicle (USV) and ROV that hangs from USV [8,9]. e system can obtain position of the inspected point without using any higher cost devices.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Image‐Based Underwater Inspection System for Abrasion of Stilling Basin Slabs of Dam

Zhang

Wang

et al. 2019

Advances in Civil Engineering

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The abrasion of stilling basin slabs which is caused by waterborne particles is one of the main surface damages in the operation of hydropower station. For determining whether to repair the stilling basin slabs, periodic inspections of erosion condition of stilling basin slabs are required. The practical problem is how to get the underwater image without unwatering and how to analyse the abrasion though the images. This paper developed a novel underwater inspection system named UIS-1 which consists of a customized underwater robot and special quantitative analysis method for this situation. Firstly, the integrated component was designed for the underwater robot that partially removes the siltation and obtains the image of the concrete surface of stilling basin slabs in the desired position. Secondly, the paper proposed an image algorithm to obtain aggregate exposure ratio for quantitative abrasion analysis. This image algorithm used SLIC superpixel and the SVM machine learning method to detect the coarse aggregate exposure automatically. Then, the aggregate exposure ratio was calculated to analyse the degree of abrasion. Finally, the UIS-1 system was evaluated in the field experiments of a dam in Sichuan, China, and its performance was discussed by comparison.

show abstract

Development of underwater inspection system for dam inspection: Results of field tests

Cited by 12 publications

References 1 publication

Development of dam inspection robot with negative pressure effect plate

Development of dam inspection robot with negative pressure effect plate

Evaluation of Under water Positioning by Hanged ROV from USV

Image‐Based Underwater Inspection System for Abrasion of Stilling Basin Slabs of Dam

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About