Survey of robotics technologies for civil infrastructure inspection

Abstract

The demands for infrastructure inspection using autonomous robots have noticeably increased, and the market is expected to grow accordingly. One of the advantages is that autonomous robots can navigate the environment and interact with humans because an inspection of a high-rise building, for instance, is considered an extremely challenging task for a human. Inspection robot systems can be classified as ground, aerial, underwater robots, or types of sensors used for inspection, such as visual or non-visual sensors. Users can choose a specific robot platform for their target and environment among them. This paper reviews various inspection robots and categorizes them according to their automated inspection system to aid the user in a good choice. Especially, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are preferred among the various robot platforms due to their high manoeuvrability. Thus, two types of aerial inspection robot platforms, such as climbing aerial robots and autonomous drone navigation systems, are introduced in detail.