A Study on a Scheme to Measure Coating Thickness of Splice Plates on Bridges with a Teleoperated Manipulator

Abstract

This paper describes the fundamental experiment for inspecting the paint coating thickness of spline plates of bridges with a teleoperated manipulator. In general, unstable suspended scaffolds are used at the bridge construction sites. In this study, the unstable scaffolds and the inspection area of a bridge are imitated, and the feasibility of the coating thickness inspection with a teleoperated manipulator is evaluated. The experimental results showed the possibility of the inspection remotely. Besides, the results clarified the issues that the robot swung back and forth during the operation due to the unstable scaffolds and the difficulty of pointing to the same inspection point due to its swing.