Inspection-while-flying: An autonomous contact-based nondestructive test using UAV-tools

Koçer, Başaran Bahadır; Tjahjowidodo, Tegoeh; Pratama, Mahardhika; Seet, Gerald

doi:10.1016/j.autcon.2019.102895

Cited by 39 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…One of the initial implementations in which the arm disturbance and the contact are considered are presented in Kocer et al. 14,28 In Kocer et al., 14 the performance degraded by the contact phase and external forces are considered for interaction with the ceiling. In these implementations, the discussion of the wall effect is not presented.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vertical surface contact with a Micro Air Vehicle

Luna

Cruz-Vega

Martínez-Carranza

2020

International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles

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In this work, we present a novel design for vertical surface contact using a two degree of freedom robotic arm attached to a Micro Air Vehicle. To achieve this, we propose a controller based on a Gain-Scheduled Proportional–Integral–Derivative approach. In previous works, the Gain-Scheduled Proportional–Integral–Derivative method was used to control the attitude of the Micro Air Vehicle, thus mitigating the perturbations induced by the movement of the arm. The novel approach of this work focuses on the achievement of an automatized full-contact with a rigid vertical surface using a Micro Air Vehicle with a robotic arm. We have improved the capabilities of the Gain-Scheduled Proportional–Integral–Derivative control to consider the inherent issues of approximating to a flat structure in order to carry out an aerial interaction task successfully. For the Micro Air Vehicle’s position feedback, a motion capture system is used in this work. A paintbrush attached to the end effector of the arm is used to draw over a whiteboard surface to show the full contact of the aerial manipulator. A distance sensor is added to the on-board sensors to measure the distance between the vertical surface and the system to ensure a correct distance and achieve a safe contact. Experimental testing results show that the controller can maintain a stable flight with sufficient accuracy to complete the aerial interaction tasks.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Vertical surface contact with a Micro Air Vehicle

Luna

Cruz-Vega

Martínez-Carranza

2020

International Journal of Micro Air Vehicles

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“…where the subscript k is the sample taken at time t k , where ∀k 0. The function f (·) is composed of discretized versions of (1) and (2). In order to obtain (6a), a direct multiple shooting method is utilized based on [28].…”

Section: B Augmented Formulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, in-site UAV inspection has gained momentum as an application area in robotic research [1]. Typical inspection application requires a robot to achieve accurate motions in close proximity to the environment for long periods of measurement [2]. This is a challenging control task for conventional controllers such as PID controller, because of the strong cross-coupling between the UAV and surroundings.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Aerial Robot Control in Close Proximity to Ceiling: A Force Estimation-based Nonlinear MPC

Koçer

Tiryaki

Pratama

et al. 2019

2019 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS)

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Being motivated by ceiling inspection applications via unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) which require close proximity flight to surfaces, a systematic control approach enabling safe and accurate close proximity flight is proposed in this work. There are two main challenges for close proximity flights: (i) the trust characteristics varies drastically for the different distance from the ceiling which results in a complex nonlinear dynamics; (ii) the system needs to consider physical and environmental constraints to safely fly in close proximity. To address these challenges, a novel framework consisting of a constrained optimization-based force estimation and an optimization-based nonlinear controller is proposed. Experimental results illustrate that the performance of the proposed control approach can stabilize UAV down to 1 cm distance to the ceiling. Furthermore, we report that the UAV consumes up to 12.5% less power when it is operated 1 cm distance to ceiling, which is promising potential for more battery-efficient inspection flights.

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“…The unsuccessful deployments occurred when the landing trajectory was not perpendicular to the target surface and translational momentum cause the probe to topple over after making contact. B, Kocer et al developed an ultrasonic system with a non-linear controller to conduct thickness measurements of a ceiling using a commercial ultrasonic transceiver [17]. The authors focused on the flight controller design to achieve stable flight and exert force on the ultrasonic transducer.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Implementation and evaluation of an autonomous airborne ultrasound inspection system

Zhang

Watson

MacLeod

et al. 2021

Nondestructive Testing and Evaluation

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The mobility of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) offers significant benefits when deploying remote Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) inspections of large-scale assets. Ultrasonic inspection is primarily a contact-based NDT method, that grants the opportunity to remotely monitor the structural health of an industrial asset with enhanced internal integrity information. Presented in this paper is an implementation of an autonomous UAV system, equipped with an ultrasonic thickness measurement payload. This system is designed to conduct ultrasonic inspections of non-magnetic facilities and industrial infrastructure where surface adhesion cannot be achieved magnetically. Operating within a laboratory environment, this system autonomously positioned the transducer on a vertically mounted, unpainted, aluminium sample and completed an ultrasonic thickness measurement without manual intervention. An onboard laser scanner provided instantaneous UAV alignment and standoff error measurements versus the sample's surface normal vector. While inspecting a region of the aluminium sample with 12.92 mm nominal thickness, the UAV system demonstrated a measurement error of 0.03 mm. During this process, the standard deviation of the craft's positional error was recorded to be below 63.26 mm, accompanied by an angular alignment error versus the surface normal vector of below 2.71°. The accuracy of the UAV deployed inspection, including thickness measurement accuracy and positional accuracy, depends on many factors. As such, transducer alignment constraints, electrical noise and UAV stability are investigated and discussed. Findings from this paper may be taken to inform future research regarding autonomous airborne ultrasonic inspection of constructed infrastructure and industrial facilities.

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Inspection-while-flying: An autonomous contact-based nondestructive test using UAV-tools

Cited by 39 publications

References 65 publications

Vertical surface contact with a Micro Air Vehicle

Vertical surface contact with a Micro Air Vehicle

Aerial Robot Control in Close Proximity to Ceiling: A Force Estimation-based Nonlinear MPC

Implementation and evaluation of an autonomous airborne ultrasound inspection system

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