Reconfigurable swarm robots for structural health monitoring: a brief review

Abstract

Autonomous monitoring of infrastructure systems offers a promising alternative to manual inspection techniques which are mostly tedious, expensive and prone to error. Robot-based autonomous monitoring systems not only provide higher precision, but they also allow frequent inspection of infrastructure systems at a much lower cost. Recent advancements in robotic systems have led to the development of reconfigurable swarm robots (RSR) that can change their shape and functionality dynamically, without any external intervention. RSR have the advantages of being modular, on-site reconfigurable, multifunctional, incrementally assemble-able, reusable, faulttolerant, and even repairable on the orbit. Newly-developed reconfigurable robots are expected to bring a radical change in the prevailing structural health monitoring techniques, thus augmenting the efficiency, accuracy and affordability of inspection operations. This paper presents a holistic review of the previous studies and state-of-the-art technologies in the field of RSR, and argues that RSR offer great potential advantages from the perspective of monitoring and assessment of civil and mechanical systems. A roadmap for future research has also been outlined based on the limitations of the current methods and anticipated needs of future inspection systems.

Self-Assembly and Self-Repair during Motion with Modular Robots

“…Another field of use that could see demand for modular robots is that of infrastructure monitoring. With predictions of USD 3407.7M being spent in 2022 on periodic inspections of civil infrastructure, this is a field that already makes extensive use of specialised robots to access hard-to-reach places [11]. Unlike static sensors, robot inspectors can follow cracks to their source and seek out spots from which the most vital information can be gleaned.…”

“…Unlike static sensors, robot inspectors can follow cracks to their source and seek out spots from which the most vital information can be gleaned. Sending modular robots in, as described by [11], would provide many advantages over using monolithic robots, the most obvious being that by reconfiguring when necessary a single platform could perform a wide variety of tasks while navigating across any infrastructure, and that this single platform could also be used on other items of infrastructure. By removing the need to specialise robots for specific tasks on specific infrastructure, installation costs can be reduced and equipment can be more readily available to perform inspections more often.…”

Strategies for guided acoustic wave inspection using mobile robots

“…For example, robots can carry an ultrasonic sensor to inspect storage tanks [ 30 ]; a robot with an ultrasonic sensor can inspect a floating production storage and offloading ship [ 25 ]; a robot with a mounted guided wave sensor can intelligently map a structure’s geometry and highlight the areas of significant wall loss [ 31 , 32 ]. Taking advantage of their ability to change their shape and functionality dynamically and reconfigure their communication connectivity, reconfigurable swarm robots [ 33 ] carrying different sensors have been recently used for safety monitoring of infrastructure such as nuclear waste storage drums [ 34 ], underground structures [ 35 ] and domes [ 36 ].…”

Visual Inspection of the Aircraft Surface Using a Teleoperated Reconfigurable Climbing Robot and Enhanced Deep Learning Technique

“…Reconfigurable robotic platforms can access confined spaces, rough terrains, and hard to navigate surfaces through dynamically changing their shape and functionality. Recently, the reconfigurable robotic platform has been widely developed and deployed in the various applications including inspection [14,15], repairs [16], cleaning [17,18], and space applications [19]. Kwon et al [20] developed a reconfigurable robot for inspection of in-house pipelines and sewage pipeline inspection.…”