π-bot: a Real-Time Autonomous Pavement Distress Survey Robot
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Lee, Cheng-Hao
Abstract
Pavement inspection is an important part of long-term maintenance and rehabilitation (M&R) work on roadways. M&R activities are often time-consuming and labor-intensive. PI-bot, an autonomous inspection method for pavements is proposed.
Two major contributions of this research are described. The first is the development of an autonomous, intelligent robot which carries inspection equipment in the field. The robot is equipped with a GPS receiver, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), a laser rangefinder, and an inspection module. PI-bot’s system software was developed using Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (MSRDS), which provides a high degree of development flexibility and extensibility, along with an Inter-Process Communication (IPC) mechanism for data synchronization. PI-bot is also equipped with a Real Time Kinematic (RTK) positioning system, an obstacle avoidance system, and re-inspection behaviors. In order to verify feasibility and performance of the proposed system, the hardware communication, software architecture, and behavior implementations were comprehensively tested in the field. The test results show that PI-bot is effectively at performing a short range and small area pavement inspection task.
The second contribution is the Chromatic Dual-Light Inspection (CDLI) method, a distress identification method suitable for automatic inspection. The CDLI method is comprised of four steps, namely image acquisition, image subtraction, image enhancement, and image classification. To validate the CDLI method, we recorded 504 images and evaluated its performance with them. The results indicate that the proposed CDLI method performs very well on normal pavement, alligator cracks, and manholes, and performs satisfactorily on spillage pavement, longitudinal cracks, and transverse cracks. With the CDLI method integrated into PI-bot, the proposed real-time autonomous pavement inspection system is demonstrated to work effectively to execute pavement inspection tasks.
Subjects
Pavement inspection system
robotics
autonomous inspection
pavement distresses
image processing
chromatic dual-light inspection
Type
thesis
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