Application of ultrasonic guided waves to robotic occupancy grid mapping

Tabatabaeipour, Morteza; Trushkevych, Oksana; Dobie, Gordon; Edwards, R. S.; McMillan, Ross; MacLeod, Charles N.; O'Leary, Richard; Dixon, S.; Gachagan, Anthony; Pierce, S. Gareth

doi:10.1016/j.ymssp.2021.108151

Cited by 24 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The first step in this project was to show that guided waves could be used for ranging and mapping, [18] was produced to show proof of concept of the guided wave occupancy grid mapping system (GW-OGM).…”

Section: Guided Wave Occupancy Grid Mappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In OGM, sensor readings are transformed into probabilities and then combined using Bayes' rule for data fusion [43]. A standard occupancy grid map calculates the posterior over the map 𝑝(𝑚 𝑖 |𝑧 1:𝑡 , 𝑥 1:𝑡 ) given a set of measured data up to time (𝑧 1:𝑡 ), and the robot poses (𝑥 1:𝑡 ), which are assumed to be known, and part of the measurement here, the full expansion of this can be found in [18].…”

Section: Guided Wave Occupancy Grid Mappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…For the work in [18] SH0 was used as the guided wave mode for sensory input as it is non-dispersive, however this choice had to be evaluated in more detail as looking at the structures that this system is likely to inspect, welds are commonplace so will be a suitable feature to localise and act as anchors for the maps. As a result, the choice of guided wave mode was evaluated by testing five wave modes (A0, S0, S1, SH0, SH1) and their reflectivity from welds [20].…”

Section: Choice Of Guided Wave Mode For Gw-ogmmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Crawler-Based Automated Non-Contact Ultrasonic Inspection of Large Structural Assets

McMillan

Tabatabaeipour

Tzaferis

et al. 2022

2022 49th Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation

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This paper presents an update on the progress of developing a crawler-based automated non-contact ultrasonic inspection system for the evaluation of large structural assets. The system presented is a significant improvement on current robotic NDT crawlers and aims to greatly reduce the time of inspection by creating an internal feature map of the subject in a Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping (SLAM) style method instead of using a lawnmower scanning style where all areas are scanned regardless if they contain features or are featureless. This map will be generated through rapid automated path planning and scanning and will show the location of potential areas of interest, where then, the appropriate method of inspection can be used for a high detailed evaluation. Current and ongoing work presented is as follows; the use of guided waves as the sensory input of an occupancy grid map; evaluating guided wave modes to find the mode most appropriate for this system; minimum thickness estimation using machine learning; improving the transducer setup using a unidirectional transmitter.

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Section: Guided Wave Occupancy Grid Mappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Guided Wave Occupancy Grid Mappingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Choice Of Guided Wave Mode For Gw-ogmmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Crawler-Based Automated Non-Contact Ultrasonic Inspection of Large Structural Assets

McMillan

Tabatabaeipour

Tzaferis

et al. 2022

2022 49th Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…To alleviate these challenges mobile robots and novel inspection platforms have been utilised to navigate and provide inspection in challenging environments [3]- [7]. This provides many key benefits such as the lack of personnel having to access the site which may be costly and or dangerous if accessing, hot areas on a nuclear site, areas which require rope access or confined spaces which may need significant venting before inspection may be carried out.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnetic Inspection Platform for Teleoperated Remote Inspections of Complex Geometry

Jackson

Zhang

McMillan

et al. 2022

2022 49th Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation

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The NDE industry is under constant pressure to increase inspection speeds, while simultaneously reducing costs to keep up with the ever-expanding demands of providing robust inspection for new infrastructure as well as ongoing inspections for currently operating facilities, and the increasing rise in the need for extensions in the planned life of existing plants. Currently, setting up an automated phased array ultrasonic inspection requires significant manpower, especially on components with complex geometry, this often exposes operators to hazardous environments. This is a particular problem with conventional ultrasonic NDT where operators must regularly exchange probes (an ‘intervention’). Furthermore, inspections are often carried out during planned outages, and the necessary installation time of rigging can represent a significant part of the inspection cost. To alleviate these challenges, several specialised robotic systems have been developed in industry for performing NDE in areas with well-defined geometries. However, these systems are often limited by a high degree of manual intervention, a lack of general-purpose design, and unsophisticated brute-force data acquisition with little to no data interpretation. The development of next generation, automated NDE solutions present considerable improvements to the current state of design such as reduced inspection time, greater separation of data capture and analysis, data localization – data are intrinsically encoded with the position they were captured. These benefits lead to a reduction in plant downtime & operator dosage. The platform presented will achieve these improvements through a set of universal automated deployment tools, implemented through hardware and software advances. By creating a platform consisting of a motorised magnetic base paired with a miniature robotic arm, a very capable and adaptable system is formed. This allows for different sensing modalities with an initial focus on phased array ultrasonics to be delivered accurately and repeatably to the target inspection site. Furthermore, by introducing additional perceptual sensors such as cameras, laser scanners, & a force-torque sensor the system can understand the environment in which it is operating. Through these sensors the user may guide the robot through the plant remotely in a safe and controlled manner. In addition to this these sensors may be used to generate scan paths of critical areas with unknown geometry on the fly as well as adapt the path in a conformable manner.

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“…The use of arrays for ultrasonic guided wave excitation is a compelling application gaining increasing interest [9,11]. Although a lot of research has been conducted for the low frequency-thickness product region, below 10 MHz•mm [10], recent work has been performed in an effort to investigate higher order guided wave generation and propagation [4,5,11]. This adds some new challenges, mainly the increase of the modal density, which makes single mode excitation more difficult.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dual Mode Inspection Using Guided Waves and Phased Array Ultrasonics from a Single Transducer

Tzaferis

Tabatabaeipour

Dobie

et al. 2022

Lecture Notes in Civil Engineering

Self Cite

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Asset inspection of large structures such as storage tanks in the oil, gas and petrochemical industry is a challenging and timeconsuming process. Compared to the state-of-the-art inspection methods of these structures using ultrasonic bulk wave phased array techniques, guided waves provide a mechanism for monitoring inaccessible areas and increasing the testing range to speed up the inspection process. Combining these two approaches, an efficient inspection scheme can be achieved. For this purpose, in this work, the possibility of exciting a single higher order guided wave mode at a low dispersion region is examined, using a conventional linear phased array on a 10 mm thick sample. An analytical model based on modal analysis is derived. Then, the time delays across each element of the array are optimally selected and a necessary condition on the pitch is provided, to enhance the purity of the desired mode. The results are promising, illustrating that single mode excitation is possible at high frequency-thickness products, greater or equal than 15 MHz•mm. Furthermore, the phased array transducer allows for dynamic mode selection capabilities; that is, feeding the appropriate excitation signals on each channel, different modes can be excited, without having to physically alter the transducer configuration.

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Application of ultrasonic guided waves to robotic occupancy grid mapping

Cited by 24 publications

References 41 publications

Crawler-Based Automated Non-Contact Ultrasonic Inspection of Large Structural Assets

Crawler-Based Automated Non-Contact Ultrasonic Inspection of Large Structural Assets

Magnetic Inspection Platform for Teleoperated Remote Inspections of Complex Geometry

Dual Mode Inspection Using Guided Waves and Phased Array Ultrasonics from a Single Transducer

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