Autonomous Ultrasonic Thickness Measurement using a Steel Climbing Mobile Robot Integrated with Martlet Wireless Sensing

This paper reports the recent development towards autonomous ultrasonic thickness measurement on steel bridge members through the novel integration of a magnet-wheeled steel climbing bicycle robot and a wireless ultrasonic sensing device named Martlet. The compact Martlet wireless device has been designed to attain accurate thickness measurement through the combination of high-voltage excitation, filtering/amplification of the received ultrasonic signal, and high-speed analog-to-digital conversion (~80 MHz). To achieve autonomous inspection, the Martlet ultrasonic device is carried by the steel climbing bicycle robot along with a dual element transducer. The developed mobile sensing system successfully obtains accurate thickness measurement in laboratory testing.