Several infrastructures, such as bridges and tunnels, require periodic inspection and repair\nto prevent collapse. There is a strong demand for practical bridge inspection robots to reduce the\ncost and time associated with the inspection of bridges by an inspector. Bridge inspection robots are\nexpected to pass through obstacles such as bolted splice part and right-angled routes. The aim of this\nstudy involved developing a bridge inspection robot that can travel on a right-angle path as well as\nsplicing parts. A two-wheel-drive robot was developed and equipped with two rimless wheels as\ndriving wheels. A neodymium magnet was provided at the tip of each spoke. Non-driving wheels\nwere attached at the rear as a rotatable caster. The robot can turn on the spot to avoid the bolt on\nthe splicing part. Experiments were conducted to check the performance of the robot. The results\nconfirmed that the robot passed through the internal right-angle paths in a laboratory and in an actual\nenvironment that corresponds to a box girder of a bridge. It is extremely difficult to manually control\na robot on the splicing part. Therefore, a camera and an LED (light emitting diode) were attached\nto autonomously control the robot. The results indicate that the newly developed robot could run\nthrough the splicing part without hitting the nuts.
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