A European consortium has developed a robot that can scan tunnel walls for tell-tale signs of impending trouble.
Called Robinspect (a bit of a tortured abbreviation for ROBotic System with Intelligent Vision and Control for Tunnel Structural INSPECTion and Evaluation), the tunnel-scanning robot sits at the end of a truck-mounted crane and searches for cracks, gaps, and fissures.  Because of its ability to scan quickly, crews can use it for drive-through inspections rather than shutting down large swaths of roadways to check out tunnel walls.
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