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FRoSt Lab
Field Robotic Systems Lab

Autonomous Civil Infrastructure Inspection

The FRoSt Lab is developing methods to enable autonomous underwater vehicles to automatically inspect underwater structures such as ship hulls, dams, bridges, and piers.

Our Marine Infrastructure

The marine infrastructure in our nation and world is in dire need of inspection, maintenance, and repair.
We have an estimated 91,457 dams in the United States and 511,986 overwater bridges.
In order to maintain these essential resources, frequent inspection is needed.

Current Inspection Practices

Current inspection is carried out manually via diver-based operations. These operations can be quite dangerous, expensive, and tedious.

Towards Autonomous Inspection

In the FRoSt lab, we are investigating methods for enabling autonomous vehicles to automatically navigate and support/perform these inspection operations.

This research has the potential to dramatically improve the frequency, quality, and cost-effectiveness of these operations, in turn leading to increase safety and stability of our infrastructure and society.