Abstract

Bridge inspection traditionally relies on scaffolds, snooper trucks, and aerial robots for hard-to-reach areas beyond the visual line of sight of inspectors. This study automates the collaborative inspection workflow for multiple users when inspecting hard-to-reach bridge sections by interfacing low-cost multimodal sensors mounted on a magnetically wheeled climbing robot with augmented reality devices in a cyber-physical system. Non-destructive and visual sensors provide near real-time information of automated steel thickness measurements and visual observations of corrosive regions, respectively. The visual sensors also support robot teleoperation. The cyber-physical system is evaluated for its user-friendliness and performance. The system performance is quantified by the live streaming lapse and the execution time for non-destructive testing in augmented reality. Audio notifications are effective for simple training instructions as they help complete 77.8% execution tasks in 0.33 minutes, while video demonstrations are preferred for complex instructions to complete 88.9% tasks in 0.29 minutes. The video captured from a GoPro mini camera is received by the inspectors with approximately 1 second delay when wirelessly transmitted to the host, while it takes 0.122 seconds over cabled transmission.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Publication Status

Open Access

Keywords and Phrases

augmented reality; climbing robot; cyber-physical system; Industry 4.0; multi-user collaboration; non-destructive evaluation; wireless communication

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

2960-2033; 2960-2025

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2026 ELSPublishing, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2026

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