This paper presents a simple but compact design of a bicycle-like robot for inspecting complex-shaped ferromagnetic structures. The design concept for versatile locomotion relies on two independently steered magnetic wheels formed in a bicycle-like configuration, allowing the robot to possess multi-directional mobility. The key feature of a reciprocating mechanism enables the robot to change its shape when passing obstacles. A dynamic joint of the robot configuration makes it naturally adapt to uneven and complex surfaces of steel structures. We demonstrate the usability and practical deployment of the robot for steel thickness measurement using an ultrasonic sensor.

This paper presents a novel design of a multi-directional bicycle robot, which is developed for the inspection of steel structures, in particular, steel-reinforced bridges. The locomotion concept is based on arranging two magnetic wheels in a bicycle-like configuration with two independent steering actuators. This configuration allows the robot to possess multi-directional mobility. An additional free joint helps the robot adapt naturally to non-flat and complex steel structures. The robot's design provides the advantage of being mechanically simple and providing high-level mobility across diverse steel structures. In addition, a visual sensor is equipped that allows the data collection for steel defect detection with offline training and validation. The paper also provides a novel pipeline for Steel Defect Detection, which utilizes multiple datasets (one for training and one for validation) from real bridges. The quantitative results have been reported for three Deep Encoder-Decoder Networks (i.e., LinkNet, UNet, DeepLab) with their corresponding Encoder modules (i.e., ResNet-18, ResNet-34, RegNet-X2, EfficientNet-B0, and EfficientNet-B2). Due to space concerns, the qualitative results have been outlined in Appendix, with a link in Fig. 11 caption to access the result provided.

The advanced robotic and automation (ARA) lab has developed and successfully implemented a design inspired by many of the various cutting edge steel inspection robots to date. The combination of these robots concepts into a unified design came with its own set of challenges since the parameters for these features sometimes conflicted. An extensive amount of design and analysis work was performed by the ARA lab in order to find a carefully tuned balance between the implemented features on the ARA robot and general functionality. Having successfully managed to implement this conglomerate of features represents a breakthrough to the industry of steel inspection robots as the ARA lab robot is capable of traversing most complex geometries found on steel structures while still maintaining its ability to efficiently travel along these structures; a feat yet to be done until now.

Motivated by a high demand for automated inspection of civil infrastructure, this work presents an efficient design and development of a tank-like robot for structural health monitoring. Unlike most existing magnetic wheeled mobile robot designs, which may be suitable for climbing on flat steel surface, our proposed tank-like robot design uses reciprocating mechanism and roller-chains to make it capable of climbing on different structural shapes (e.g., cylinder, cube) with coated or non-coated steel surfaces. The developed robot is able to pass through the joints and transition from one surface to the other (e.g., from flat to curving surfaces). Taking into account several strict considerations (including tight dimension, efficient adhesion and climbing flexibility) to adapt with various shapes of steel structures, a prototype tank-like robot integrating multiple sensors (hall-effects, sonars, inertial measurement unit, Eddy current and cameras), has been developed. Rigorous analysis of robot kinematics, adhesion force, sliding failure and turn-over failure has been conducted to demonstrate the stability of the proposed design. Mechanical and magnetic force analysis together with sliding/turn-over failure investigation can serve as an useful framework for designing various steel climbing robots in the future. The robot is integrated with cameras and Eddy current sensor for visual and in-depth fatigue crack inspection of steel structures. Experimental results and field deployments confirm the adhesion, climbing, inspection capability of the developed robot.

The paper introduces a new secure power aware many-to-many routing protocol for wireless sensor and actuator networks. Actuators register for sensing data and sensor nodes send data directly to actuators using the proposed protocol. The protocol has two versions. The first version is designed for networks where every node transmits at the same power level. The second version is for the case where nodes can individually adjust the transmission power according to the channel conditions and communications distance. The protocol increases energy efficiency and prolongs network life-time while still keeps the communications secure. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Integer factorization is an interesting but a hard problem and stays at the core of many security mechanisms. Conventional approaches to factor big integer numbers often require powerful computers and a great effort in software development. In this paper, we present a different approach to this problem by running the quadratic sieve algorithm in the Hadoop framework. This approach offers a much easier way to develop program and to setup the working environment. It can also be scaled easily to work with a large number of computers.

A new secure power aware many-to-many routing protocol for wireless sensor and actuator networks is introduced. The protocol has two versions. The first version is designed for networks where every node transmits at the same power level. The second version is for the case where nodes can individually adjust the transmission power according to the channel conditions and communications distance. In both versions, actuators are registered for sensed data, and every intermediate node that relays registration messages authenticates them through an efficient and secure protocol. When sensor nodes have data, they are sent directly to the actuators registered for that type of data by using a secure many to many routing protocol.