Nowadays tunnel structural inspections are executed based on visual (human) inspections. This is a slow process, labor expensive and subjective, while requiring lane/rail shutdown during the inspection.

ROBO-SPECT is an EC co-funded research project (FP7 - ICT – 611145) that, driven by the tunnel inspection industry, adapts and integrates recent research results in intelligent control in robotics, computer vision and active learning and sensing, in an integrated, robotic system that automatically scans the intrados of tunnels for potential structural defects. The system additionally inspects and measures radial deformation in the cross-sections, distance between cracks, joints that may impact tunnel stability, with mm accuracies.

This publication focuses on ROBO-SPECT EC project first year activities presenting the overall system architecture, as well as the technologies that will be integrated, and overall technological solution. The current status of implementations and the following steps, together with its expected European and International impact is also included.