Towards a Generic Solution for Inspection of Industrial Sites

Hutter, Marco; Diethelm, Remo; Bachmann, S.; Fankhauser, Péter; Gehring, Christian; Tsounis, Vassilios; Lauber, Andreas; Guenther, Fabian; Bjelonic, Marko; Isler, Linus; Kolvenbach, Hendrik; Meyer, Konrad; Hoepflinger, Mark A.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-67361-5_37

Cited by 27 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 14 publications

(21 reference statements)

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“…We propose the usage of autonomous legged robots to inspect and map large‐ and medium‐sized sewers. Legged robots are relatively small, have high mobility in complex, human‐made environments, and can adapt their posture to inspect areas of interest (Bellicoso et al, 2018; Hutter, Diethelm et al, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards autonomous inspection of concrete deterioration in sewers with legged robots

Kolvenbach

Wisth

Buchanan

et al. 2020

Journal of Field Robotics

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The regular inspection of sewer systems is essential to assess the level of degradation and to plan maintenance work. Currently, human inspectors must walk through sewers and use their sense of touch to inspect the roughness of the floor and check for cracks. The sense of touch is used since the floor is often covered by (waste) water and biofilm, which renders visual inspection very challenging. In this paper, we demonstrate a robotic inspection system which evaluates concrete deterioration using tactile interaction. We deployed the quadruped robot ANYmal in the sewers of Zurich and commanded it using shared autonomy for several such missions. The inspection itself is realized via a well-defined scratching motion using one of the limbs on the sewer floor. Inertial and force/torque sensors embedded within specially designed feet captured the resulting vibrations. A pretrained support vector machine (SVM) is evaluated to assess the state of the concrete. The results of the classification are then displayed in a three-dimensional map recorded by the robot for easy visualization and assessment. To train the SVM we recorded 625 samples with ground truth labels provided by professional sewer inspectors. We make this data set publicly available. We achieved deterioration level estimates within three classes of more than 92% accuracy. During the four deployment missions, we covered a total distance of 300 m and acquired 130 inspection samples.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards autonomous inspection of concrete deterioration in sewers with legged robots

Kolvenbach

Wisth

Buchanan

et al. 2020

Journal of Field Robotics

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“…As a proof of concept, our work discusses two applications where such a robot can be potentially deployed. Figure shows the quadrupedal robot ANYmal (Hutter, Gehring, et al, ) in use for industrial inspection on an industrial site (Hutter et al, ; left) and as medkit delivery robot in a search and rescue scenario (right).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Advances in real‐world applications for legged robots

Bellicoso

Bjelonic

Wellhausen

et al. 2018

Journal of Field Robotics

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125

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This paper provides insight into the application of the quadrupedal robot ANYmal in outdoor missions of industrial inspection (autonomous robot for gas and oil sites[ARGOS] challenge) and search and rescue (European Robotics League (ERL) Emergency Robots). In both competitions, the legged robot had to autonomously and semiautonomously navigate in real-world scenarios to complete high-level tasks such as inspection and payload delivery. In the ARGOS competition, ANYmal used a rotating light detection and ranging sensor to localize on the industrial site and map the terrain and obstacles around the robot. In the ERL competition, additional realtime kinematic-global positioning system was used to colocalize the legged robot with respect to a micro aerial vehicle that creates maps from the aerial view. The high mobility of legged robots allows overcoming large obstacles, for example, steps and stairs, with statically and dynamically stable gaits. Moreover, the versatile machine can adapt its posture for inspection and payload delivery. The paper concludes with insight into the general learnings from the ARGOS and ERL challenges.

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“…Additionally, in 2016, ETHZ published a quadruped robot named ANYmal to inspect oil and gas sites. It exhibits precise torque control, and is highly robust against impulsive loads during running or jumping with various sensors [23][24][25][26]. The quadruped robot "Scalf " with a hydraulic drive system was built in Shandong university in 2012 [27][28][29][30].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gait Analysis of Quadruped Robot Using the Equivalent Mechanism Concept Based on Metamorphosis

Ding

2019

Chin. J. Mech. Eng.

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The previous research regarding the gait planning of quadruped robot focuses on the sequence for lifting off and placing the feet, but neglects the influence of body height. However, body height affects gait performance significantly, such as in terms of the stride length and stability margin. We herein study the performance of a quadruped robot using the equivalent mechanism concept based on metamorphosis. Assuming the constraints between standing feet and the ground with hinges, the ground, standing legs and robot body are considered as a parallel mechanism, and each swing leg is regarded as a typical serial manipulator. The equivalent mechanism varies while the robot moves on the ground. One gait cycle is divided into several periods, including step forward stages and switching stages. There exists a specific equivalent mechanism corresponding to each gait period. The robot's locomotion can be regarded as the motion of these series of equivalent mechanisms. The kinematics model and simplified model of the equivalent mechanism is established. A new definition of the multilegged robot stability margin, based on friction coefficient, is presented to evaluate the robot stability. The stable workspaces of the equivalent mechanism in the step forward stage of trotting gait under different friction coefficients are analyzed. The stride length of the robots is presented by analyzing the relationship between the stable workspaces of the equivalent mechanisms of two adjacent step forward stages in one gait cycle. The simulation results show that the stride length is larger with increasing friction coefficient. We herein propose a new method based on metamorphosis, and an equivalent mechanism to analyze the stability margin and stable workspace of the multilegged robot.

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Towards a Generic Solution for Inspection of Industrial Sites

Cited by 27 publications

References 14 publications

Towards autonomous inspection of concrete deterioration in sewers with legged robots

Towards autonomous inspection of concrete deterioration in sewers with legged robots

Advances in real‐world applications for legged robots

Gait Analysis of Quadruped Robot Using the Equivalent Mechanism Concept Based on Metamorphosis

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