MICROBOTIC INFRASTRUCTURE ASSESSMENT
Penstocks are long steel tubes that carry water from the upstream side of a dam to hydroelectric turbines deep in the dam superstructure. Due to difficulty inspecting them, ERDC research is developing a small, robust, operational, unmanned, micro-inspection robot called Microbot. The Microbot requires little to no skill to operate because it uses a suite of onboard sensors to map the penstock and navigate from one end to the other without human input, avoiding obstacles along the way. The Microbot illuminates the penstock interior with onboard LEDs and collects imagery for the entire penstock circumference as the robot flies down the center of the tube. Software developed for the Microbot processes imagery and LIDAR data collected by the robot into formats that can be used in semiautomated post-flight virtual inspections. Machine learning algorithms automatically detect areas where the penstock lining is corroded or otherwise compromised and presents them to inspection engineers for further investigation.
REDUCES RISK TO PERSONNEL & INSPECTION TIME
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