Intelligent Automation, Inc. — Department of Transportation SBIR Phase II: 141FH3

Description

Today, urban underground spaces are shared by multiple utility companies for laying power lines, gas lines, water supply/sewage pipes, fiber-optic cables, etc. The recordings of such buried utilities are often erroneous, inadequate, or outdated (if they ever exist) due to insufficient surveying methodologies and as-built recording practices. Ability to accurately locate and provide awareness of buried utility structure is therefore urgently needed by not only those utility companies but also other stakeholders of the underground spaces such as city planners, construction companies, asset management/maintenance authorities, archaeologists, etc. To address this problem, IAI has developed the Robotic Utility Mapping and Inspection System (RUMI) whose demonstrated capabilities include: 1) Autonomous area inspection; 2) Integrated subsurface and aboveground data collection and 3D visualization; 3) Augmented reality projection; and 4) Dynamic asset information retrieval. In this effort, IAI will develop the next generation of the RUMI system—specifically being enhanced for practical use in operational environments. Some of the notable enhancements include: 1) Improvement of the situational awareness; 2) Extension of the asset management subsystem to the Building Information Modeling (BIM) framework; 3) Improvement of the autonomous mapping methods; and 4) Ruggedization of the robotic system.