Oxford Robotics Institute | Projects - AutoInspect

Autonomous inspection of hazardous or difficult to access facilities has become a practical application for mobile robots. There is a growing demand for robust solutions that have been tested in realistic facilities.

AutoInspect combines technology from two ORI research groups: the Dynamics Robot Systems (DRS) Group and Goal-Oriented Long-Lived Systems (GOALS) Lab. AutoInspect can be deployed in a matter of hours and has three main components:

• Localisation and Mapping: A full solution for graph-based LIDAR simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) as well as the capability to localize in existing maps based on our VILENS mapping engine. This allows robots such as Spot to build up a navigational map in the time needed to walk a facility.
• Mission Planning: Given the navigational map, we build a topological mission graph which can be annotated with features of interest such as inspection points for chemical, thermal or visual sample taking. The mission planner includes advanced features such as battery-power aware mission planning and automatic blocked passageway re-routing.
• Frontier Payload: The Frontier device (7th generation) combines an NUC PC (i7 generation), Hesai XT32 lidar, 3x synchronized fisheye cameras and a mesh networking solution to deliver AutoInspect onto the mobile robot - with particular integration expertise for the Boston Dynamics Spot. Our past experience deploying AutoInspect in nuclear facilities, oil and gas plants and construction sites give confidence of reliability to all manner of communication, dynamics and sensor challenges.