Duct fan based wall climbing robot for concrete surface crack inspection

Degradation inspection of inaccessible parts of concrete structures is always a difficult task. An efficient and low cost solution is the use of wall climbing robots in such areas. In this paper, we propose a duct fan based wall climbing robot for the crack inspection on concrete wall surfaces. The thrust force provided by the duct fan holds the robot on to the wall. This wireless robot moves like a four wheeled vehicle on the wall surface and captures images of the wall under inspection using a camera mounted on it. Cracks are detected from these images using percolation method of image processing.