Abstract
This project developed a simulation training software for operators to monitor and supervise autonomous robots when inspecting steel truss bridges. Since the software abstracts the command and situation visualization interface when dealing with simulated inspection robots and bridge, the same software can be connected to physical robots to control and monitor physical robots during bridge inspection. Version 1 of Simulation Training and Control (STACS) was developed and tested with two virtual bridges and one virtual climbing robot for steel truss member inspection and one virtual flying UAV for visual inspection. This version of STACS also prototyped and tested a Robot Operating System (ROS) bridge to a physical Roomba robot to demonstrate teleoperative control of the physical robot and the ability to send commands and receive sensor information as well as to stream camera views. Initial experiments with STACS in simulation revealed the importance of robot routing to minimize inspection time while visiting every member of the bridge truss. Although complete, optimal routes for one climbing robot can be found in polynomial time, k-robot complete optimal routing, corresponding to the MinMax k Chinese Postman Problem, is NP-complete and no reasonable time optimal algorithm exists. A genetic algorithm was developed to near-optimally solve the k-robot problem and was scaled up caching and by parallelizing the genetic algorithm to use GPUs. Tests on benchmarks and a test bridge validated and demonstrated the feasibility of our approach for k-robot routing and linear speedup as k increases.
Recommended Citation
Louis, Sushil J., "Developing a Robotic Simulator and Video Games for Professional and Public Training" (2022). Project WD-2. 1.
https://scholarsmine.mst.edu/project_wd-2/1
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Research Center/Lab(s)
INSPIRE - University Transportation Center
Sponsor(s)
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology U.S. Department of Transportation 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20590
Keywords and Phrases
Simulation, robots, inspection, k-Chinese Postman Problem
Report Number
INSPIRE-011
Document Type
Technical Report
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2024 Missouri University of Science and Technology, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
24 October, 2022
Comments
USDOT #69A3551747126