Inspection Robotic System: Design and Simulation for Indoor and Outdoor Surveys

In this paper, the design and simulation are presented for a wheeled robot designed for indoor and outdoor inspections. In particular, for a large number of cases, an automatic or tele-operated survey can be performed by wheeled mobile robots, which represent the most efficient solution in terms of power consumption, control, robustness and overall costs. Referring to the analysis of structures and infrastructure, such as bridges and pipelines, wheeled robots must be able to move on horizontal or sloped surfaces and overpass obstacles that in most of cases are steps, i.e. longitudinal internal stiffeners. In this paper, we present a mechatronic design and simulations of a wheeled robot being used in indoor and outdoor inspections, taking as illustrative example an infrastructure inspection. In particular, the wheeled robot is equipped with suitable sensors in order to take information on the main structural elements, avoiding the need of experienced personnel to get directly inside the site to be inspected.