A Climbing Robot for Maintenance Operations in Confined Spaces

Confined spaces pose a range of risks for workers, including physical injuries, oxygen deficiency, and even fatalities. To eliminate health and safety risks, replacing human workers with intelligent robots is an ideal solution. This chapter presents an autonomous climbing robot designed for inspection and maintenance within confined tunnel environments in steel bridges. The robot design, sensing, perception, localization, and motion planning and control are presented. Extensive tests were conducted in both lab and field environments to verify its suitability for autonomous operations in confined spaces.