Howard Ji
University High School
Irvine, CA
Development of a Novel Autonomous Column-Climbing Robotic System (AutoBot) for Real-Time Detection and Mapping of Surface Cracks on Bridges
Howard Ji designed and built a robot to make inspections of aging bridges safer while reducing both costs and risks to human inspectors. By wrapping four of his “AutoBots” together around a bridge’s column, he showed that they could autonomously climb, inspect, and send a map of defects to his machine-learning system in real time.
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Howard Ji, 17, of Irvine, created a robot to make inspections of aging bridges safer by reducing risks to human inspectors for his Regeneron Science Talent Search engineering project. Howard’s AutoBot has three elements: wire wrapping to hold itself onto the bridge column, hardware that’s responsible for driving and collecting image data, and software that he created to map surface damage in real time. In tests, he deployed four AutoBots wrapped around a bridge’s column and connected by wire, side-by-side, to inspect the surface. Each AutoBot uses two main processors and climbs the column autonomously. In tests on a concrete bridge, the four connected AutoBots climbed together at a speed of 4.7 cm/s while successfully detecting defects at a mean precision rate of about 83%.
In tests, he deployed four AutoBots wrapped around a bridge’s column and connected by wire, side-by-side, to inspect the surface. Each AutoBot uses two main processors and climbs the column autonomously. In tests on a concrete bridge, the four connected AutoBots climbed together at a speed of 4.7 cm/s while successfully detecting defects at a mean precision rate of about 83%.
Howard, the son of Wenhui Zhang and Chuanwen Ji, attends University High School, where he is co-president of the Science Olympiad and science club. Outside the classroom, he co-leads a 10-member team in the American Rocketry Challenge, which involves designing, building, and launching rockets. Howard became a community activist after learning about environmental toxins produced by a nearby asphalt plant.
Beyond the Project
Howard finds that playing the cello is a way to express himself and explore “various emotional landscapes through music written by masters young and very old.”
FUN FACTS: Howard likes to fly kites. To get one into the air, one must push and pull in a repeated pattern and when the kite finally gets aloft, he says it’s a perfect representation of control and patience.
