Autonomous Inspection

Autonomous inspection utilizes robots to automatically survey and assess various environments, aiming for increased efficiency, safety, and data quality compared to manual methods. Current research emphasizes robust navigation and localization in GPS-denied or challenging terrains (e.g., using SLAM, behavior trees, and AI-based pose estimation), efficient path planning algorithms (incorporating uncertainty and optimizing for coverage), and advanced perception techniques (including semantic reasoning and anomaly detection) to extract meaningful information from sensor data. This field is significantly impacting infrastructure monitoring, industrial maintenance, and even precision agriculture, offering safer and more cost-effective solutions for complex inspection tasks.