Robotic model for unmanned crack and corrosion inspection

Abstract

After prolonged usage of materials, the formation of cracks and corrosion initiates due to stress, loading condition, the environment of operation, etc. and this affects the structural integrity of structures. Periodic inspection of structures is usually planned, especially in industries where the impact of failure could be devastating, such as oil and gas pipelines, storage tanks, vessels, and airplanes, etc. which are just a few amongst others. This inspection is often aimed at detecting cracks and corrosion of internal and external components using several forms of non-destructive testing mechanism usually performed by a specialist at a high rate. To reduce the cost of inspection as well as downtime due to inspections and maintenance, deployments of mobile robots with fault tracking and identification purpose are steadily increasing. This paper, therefore, details the implementation of an image processing technique using MATLAB to identify defects of structural elements.