A Review of Technical Advances and Applications of Intelligent Inspection Robots in Structural Health Monitoring

ABSTRACT Structural health monitoring is essential to ensure the safe operation of infrastructure such as construction machinery and bridges, which can effectively prevent accidents, extend service life, and reduce maintenance costs. However, traditional inspection methods mainly rely on manual visual inspection, which has limitations such as low efficiency, high cost, and high risk, making it difficult to meet the demand for efficient and accurate inspection in modern engineering. As an emerging technology, intelligent inspection robots provide a new solution for structural health monitoring by virtue of their autonomy, flexibility, and efficiency. This paper systematically reviews the technical characteristics of intelligent detection robots in structural health monitoring and their applications in different scenarios, with a focus on analyzing their performance in actual detection. At the same time, it summarizes their application progress in sensor technology, fault data processing and analysis methods, and fault localization technology, highlighting their ability to achieve efficient data acquisition, accurate defect identification, and real‐time health assessment in complex environments. In addition, the main technical challenges faced by current inspection robots are summarized, such as stability in complex environments, data processing capability, and autonomous decision‐making level. Finally, the future development direction of inspection robots is outlooked, which mainly focuses on the deep integration of artificial intelligence and machine learning, the optimization of multi‐robot collaborative technology, and the improvement of lightweight and energy efficiency. Through this review, we aim to provide theoretical support and practical reference for further research and application of intelligent inspection robots in the field of structural health monitoring.