본 연구에서는 해상에서 선박의 외측 표면 검사를 위한 모바일 로봇의 개발에 대해 언급하였다. 해상에서 선체 측면에 대한 검사를 육안으로 진행하기 어려우며 이러한 검사를 효과적으로 수행하기 위해 모바일 로봇은 선체 측면에 부착되어 주행할 수 있는 기능을 갖추어야 한다. 이를 위해 선체 측면과의 부착력을 발생시키기 위해 영구 자석 모듈을 도입하였고, 곡면 주행 시 자기력의 변화를 최소화하는 구조로 설계를 하였다. 이러한 설계를 바탕으로 4개의 네오디움 자석, 4개의 구동바퀴, 영상 획득 모듈로 구성되는 모바일 로봇을 제작하였다. 제작된 로봇에 대해 선체와의 부착력을 확인하기 위한 하중 실험을 실시하였고, 주행이후 정지 시 측면 미끄럼 실험과 주행 속도 측정 실험을 실시하였다. 실험 결과 13 [Kgf]까지 선체와의 부착력을 유지할 수 있었고, 미끄러짐이 없는 하중은 8 [Kgf]까지였다. 주행 실험에서는 6.5 [A]의 전류에 대해 0.82 [m/s]의 속도로 주행할 수 있는 것을 확인하였다. 선박의 표면 검사를 위해 개발한 모바일 로봇의 특성 실험을 통해 로봇의 유용성을 확인할 수 있었다.

The camera embedded wall climbing robot in this paper combines the suction and aerodynamic attraction to achieve good balance between strong adhesion force and high mobility and adopts embedded image processing technique to detect targets on the warehouse inspection. Experimental results showed that the robot can move upward on the wall at the speed of 2.9m/min and carry 5kg payload in addition to 2.5kg self-weight, which record the highest payload capacity among climbing robots of similar size. With two 11.1V lithium-polymer battery, the robot can operate continuously for half hours. A wireless camera system, zigbee protocol module and several sensors was adopted for detecting target objects and dangerous situation on the warehouse wall and for sending alarm signals to remote sensor node or manager.

In order to supply the high-quality electric power, several researches have been conducted. For the high-quality power, it is necessary to inspect the power lines and insulators before the lines or insulators are disconnected or damaged. However, it is not enough to inspect all the power lines by human inspectors. In previous study, a power line inspection robot was developed to investigate the power lines and insulators. According to replace the human operators by the robot, the inspection robot has several advantages: the improved working conditions, machine accuracy, and the prevention of accident. However, the robot has some defects in its heavyweight. In this study, a lightweight inspection robot has been developed using a RP and a vacuum casting. And, this study developed a fault detection monitoring program for the high voltage equipment using a microphone which detects the location of fault and the thermal imaging and CCD cameras which verifies the fault and stores the image, respectively.

케이블지지 교량 건설의 증가로 인하여 이러한 시설물의 안전 점검에 대한 관심도 점차 증가하고 있다. 케이블지지 교량에서는 주 부재인 케이블의 성능 평가가 필수적으로 이루어져야 함에 불구하고, 기존의 점검 방식으로는 다양한 제한적인 요인 때문에 적절한 점검이 이루어지지 못하고 있는 실정이다. 이러한 문제점을 보완하기 위해 케이블 점검 로봇 제작이 필요하고, 본 연구에서는 기존의 개발된 케이블 점검 로봇의 성능을 향상시켜서 로봇의 운용 효율성을 높이는데 주목적을 두었다. 성능 보완 요소로는 대 구경 케이블(>200mm)에도 적용할 수 있도록 로봇의 가용범위를 조절할 수 있도록 하였으며, 주행능력도 향상시켜 점검의 효율성을 향상시켰다. 케이블의 내부 손상을 점검하기 위해 전자기센서를 탑재하였고, 실내 실험을 통해 다양한 케이블 손상 유형에 따른 손상 검출 시험을 실시하였다. 추가로 현재 공용중인 교량에서 현장 성능평가를 실시하였다. 그 결과로 본 연구에서 개발된 케이블 점검 로봇은 주행속도에서는 ~0.2m/s로 기존의 점검 로봇에 비해 향상 된 주행 능력을 보였으며, 케이블 내부 손상 점검 실험에서는 케이블 손상 부분을 검출을 할 수 있었다. 마지막으로, 케이블 점검 로봇의 현장 검증 실험에서는 실내 실험과 같은 성능을 보이는 것을 확인하였다.

In this paper, we propose a cable climbing robot which can climb up and down the cables in the bridges. The robot mechanism consists of three parts: a wheel based driving mechanism, adhesion mechanism, and safe landing mechanism. The wheel based driving mechanism is driven by tooth clutches and motors. The adhesion mechanism plays the role of maintaining adhesion force by a combination of pantograph, ball screw, and springs even when the power is lost. The safe landing mechanism is developed for guaranteeing the safety of the robot during operations on cables. It can make the robot fall down with reduced speed by dissipating the gravitational forces. The robot mechanism is designed and manufactured for validating its effectiveness.

Since cable members are the major structural components in cable bridges, they should be properly inspected for surface damage as well as inside defects such as corrosion and/or breakage of wires. Starting from August 2010, a new research project supported by Korea Ministry of Land, Transportation Maritime Affairs (MLTM) was initiated to develop the cable inspection robot. In this study, only the vision-based surface damage detection system based on image processing techniques is addressed. The damage detection algorithm combines some image enhancement techniques with principal component analysis (PCA) to detect damages on cable surface. The images from three cameras attached to the cable climbing robot are wirelessly transmitted to the server computer at the cable support. They are processed with image enhancement method together with noise removal technique to improve overall image quality. Then they are projected into PCA sub-space. Finally, the Mahalanobis square distances of the projected images to all sample patterns are calculated. The smallest distance is found to be the match for the input image. The proposed damage detection algorithm was verified through laboratory tests on three types of cables.

This paper proposes a bridge inspection system using a robot to manage the safety status of bridges. A conventional bridge inspection has a lot of problems because inspection is conducted manually by human. As an alternative, we are to develop a robot system having machine vision and this robot system is mounted on an end linkage of specially designed car having seven DOF (Degrees Of Freedom) to inspect cracks beneath bridge. This system is able to check a status of the bridge and record its changes every other year. As a result, the developed robot system offers us the inspection result of quality and reliability about the bridge inspection status. Also, we have tested the effectiveness of the suggested system through outdoor experiments.

It is dangerous that an inspector overhauls defects and condition of the inner parts of an oil tanker because of many harmful gases, complex structures, and etc. However, these inspections are necessary to many oil tankers over old years. In this study, we proposed the design of mobile robot for inspection of CAS in oil tanker. The developed CAS inspection mobile robot has four modules, a measurement module of oil tanker's thickness, a corrosion inspection module, a climbing module of the surface on a wall, and a monitoring module. In order to get over at a check position, the driving control algorithm was developed. Magnetic wheels are used to move on the surface of a wall. This study constructed a communication network and the monitoring program to operate the developed mobile robot from remote sites. In order to evaluate the inspection ability, the experiments about performance of CAS inspection using the developed mobile robot have been carried out.