No. 813: An unmanned flight robot for the inspection of infrastructures (November 28, 2013)

Technology:

An unmanned flight robot

 

Prof. Kenzo Nonami of Chiba University developed an unmanned flight robot with six propellers. Equipped with a camera and the GPS, it can fly 3 km around freely to take pictures. It can fly through between bridge beams and windmill vanes and stand still in air, and go up to 500 m above the ground fast like a rocket if necessary.   

The robot returns to the base automatically when the battery runs out. The operator can fly it again after he replaces the battery with a new one. Prof. Nonami is now developing a technology to allow the robot to go down to the ground with the help of a parachute when it goes out of control while flying. It is designed to inspect the deterioration of such infrastructures as solar panels of photovoltaic generation, windmills of wind generation, bridge beams, and piping of iron works. It will be put on the market next spring.  

 Demonstration video of the unnmanned flight robot