Utilizing Wireless Meshing Sensors for Structural Health Monitoring

Abstract

To facilitate the long-range wide area in situ analyte monitoring of a subterranean structure, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) has developed a robotics system, the Subterranean Probe for Locating Intrusions, Natural Threats, and Environmental Reconnaissance (SPLINTER), and a sensor agnostic wireless sensor network, the Guardian Node (GN). In support of USACE Missions, there is a need to determine the presence of harmful chemicals before humans enter the area. The SPLINTER is a common robotics system (individual), CRS(I), robot with a sensor payload that enables the robot to perform simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) of subterranean systems. This capability allows the robot to create a detailed map of the environment, which is then used to inform the placement of GNs. The GN is a developed in-house sensor node that forms a wireless, meshing, and self-healing ad-hoc sensor network that interfaces with ERDC-developed chemical sensing platforms such as the Army Corps of Engineers Potentiostat (ACEstat), and the in-development quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation (QCM-D) system, as well as commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) systems that utilize standard digital protocols including SPI, I2C, and UART. Together, the SPLINTER deploys the GNs, which then enable a subject matter expert (SME) to perform near real-time analyte monitoring of a subterranean structure.