Implementation and validation of robot-enabled embedded sensors for structural health monitoring

In the past decades, structural health monitoring (SHM) has matured into a viable supplement to regular inspections, facilitating the execution of repair and maintenance work in the early stages of structural damage. With the advent of wireless technologies and advancements in information and communication technologies, civil infrastructure has been increasingly instrumented with wireless sensor nodes to record, analyze, and communicate data relevant to SHM. A promising method for SHM is to embed sensors directly into concrete for recording SHM data from inside structural elements. In this paper, a sensor system for embedment into concrete is proposed, able to assess SHM data recorded from concrete. Power is supplied to the sensors on-demand by quadruped robots, which also collect the SHM data via radio-frequency identification (RFID), providing an automated and efficient SHM process. In laboratory experiments, the capability of the sensor system of automatically collecting the SHM data using quadruped robots is validated. In summary, the integration of RFID technology and robot-based inspection presented in this study demonstrates a vital approach to evolve current SHM practices towards more digitalized and automated SHM.

Subjects

embedded sensors

legged robots

quadruped robots

RFID-based sensors

smart sensors

Structural health monitoring

DDC Class

624.1: Structural Engineering

Publication version

publishedVersion

Lizenz

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Name

320_manuscript.pdf

Type

Main Article

Size

495.85 KB

Format

Adobe PDF

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Implementation and validation of robot-enabled embedded sensors for structural health monitoring