Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 2609.26130

Design and Implementation of an Ultra-Low-Cost Wall-Climbing Robot for Infrastructure Crack Detection

Mrinmoy Modak·Supreyo Chakravorty Pretom·Shourv Tarafder·Daniel S. Drew
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Crack detection is a crucial process to ensure the safety and longevity of buildings and other infrastructure. In this paper, we developed a low-cost, automated crack detection robot that leverages CNN, EfficientNet-B0, and YOLOv8 for efficient identification of cracks in concrete surfaces with a curated crack image dataset introduced to support training and evaluation. YOLOv8's real-time object detection enhances crack localization, while CNN and EfficientNet-B0 provide binary classification, ensuring high precision and recall. The system consists of two stages. In the first stage, YOLOv8 detects and localizes wall regions from the video frame, and the bounding boxes are cropped. The second stage performs crack detection using one of three models by analyzing the cropped regions. Cost-effective approaches are also taken for robot design. The robot features a fan-based negative pressure adhesion system, a 4-wheeled skid-steering drive, and an ESP32-CAM for real-time image capture. Its lightweight 3D-printed chassis ensures stability, allowing it to navigate both walls and ceilings while capturing images for crack analysis. Unlike conventional wall-climbing robot designs, this robot incorporates a funnel-shaped body that enhances negative pressure generation and achieves a 44% reduction in duty cycle, significantly lowering power consumption. By combining low-cost hardware with a deep learning pipeline, our system provides a scalable, efficient, and accessible solution for real-time infrastructure inspection at an approximate total cost of $25, with a lightweight web application enabling smartphone-based control. This affordability makes the system more suitable for the developing world, where infrastructure inspection is often limited by budget constraints, labor intensity, and safety risks.

Explore related subjects

cs.RO

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Mrinmoy Modak, Supreyo Chakravorty Pretom, Shourv Tarafder, Daniel S. Drew. 2026-08-07. Design and Implementation of an Ultra-Low-Cost Wall-Climbing Robot for Infrastructure Crack Detection. https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.26130

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

J-PARSE: Jacobian-based Projection Algorithm for Resolving Singularities Effectively in Inverse Kinematic Control of Serial Manipulators

J-PARSE is an algorithm for smooth first-order inverse kinematic control of a serial manipulator near kinematic singularities. The commanded end-effector velocity is interpreted component-wise, according to the available mobility in each dimension of the task space. First, a substitute ''Safety'' Jacobian matrix is created, keeping the aspect ratio of the manipulability ellipsoid above a threshold value. The desired velocity is then projected onto non-singular and singular directions, and the latter projection scaled down by a factor informed by the altered mobility. A right-inverse of the non-singular Safety Jacobian is applied to the modified command. In the absence of joint limits and collisions, this ensures safe transition into and out of low-mobility configurations, guaranteeing locally stable reaching behavior towards target poses within, on the boundary of, and outside the workspace. The behavior is further guaranteed to be locally asymptotically stable if the starting and target configurations are not exactly singular, even if they are nearly singular. Velocity control with J-PARSE is benchmarked against approaches from the literature, illustrating its use of a single tuning parameter to simultaneously achieve high reaching accuracy and stable behavior. Applications in teleoperation, servoing, and learning are demonstrated. Videos and code are available at https://jparse-manip.github.io/.

cs.RO↗
arXiv2026

NeMo-map: Neural Implicit Flow Fields for Spatio-Temporal Motion Mapping

Safe and efficient robot operation in complex human environments can benefit from good models of site-specific motion patterns. Maps of Dynamics (MoDs) provide such models by encoding statistical motion patterns in a map, but existing representations use discrete spatial sampling and typically require costly offline construction. We propose a continuous spatio-temporal MoD representation based on implicit neural functions that directly map coordinates to the parameters of a Semi-Wrapped Gaussian Mixture Model. This removes the need for discretization and imputation for unevenly sampled regions, enabling smooth generalization across both space and time. Evaluated on two public datasets with real-world people tracking data, our method achieves better accuracy of motion representation and smoother velocity distributions in sparse regions while still being computationally efficient, compared to available baselines. The proposed approach demonstrates a powerful and efficient way of modeling complex human motion patterns and high performance in the trajectory prediction downstream task. The code is publicly available at https://github.com/test-bai-cpu/nemo-map.

cs.RO↗
arXiv2026

Spatiotemporal Calibration of Doppler Velocity Logs for Underwater Robots

The calibration of extrinsic parameters and clock offsets between sensors for high-accuracy performance in underwater SLAM systems remains insufficiently explored. Existing methods for Doppler Velocity Log (DVL) calibration are either constrained to specific sensor configurations or rely on oversimplified assumptions, and none jointly estimate translational extrinsics and time offsets. We propose a Unified Iterative Calibration (UIC) framework for general DVL sensor setups, formulated as a Maximum A Posteriori (MAP) estimation with a Gaussian Process (GP) motion prior for high-fidelity motion interpolation. UIC alternates between efficient GP-based motion state updates and gradient-based calibration variable updates, supported by a provably statistically consistent sequential initialization scheme. The proposed UIC can be applied to IMU, cameras and other modalities as co-sensors. We release an open-source DVL-camera calibration toolbox. Beyond underwater applications, several aspects of UIC-such as the integration of GP priors for MAP-based calibration and the design of provably reliable initialization procedures-are broadly applicable to other multi-sensor calibration problems. Finally, simulations and real-world tests validate our approach.

cs.RO↗