Abstract: The rapidly increasing urban rail transit operation mileage has brought pressure to daily inspection of rail transit track work in China. Conventional labour inspection has various limitations and need to be aided by smart detection equipment to improve efficiency and quality. Currently, the smart inspection equipment in service are generally having shortcomings such as low rapid deployment capacity, limited real-time defect detection inspection and alarm, lack of defect management system, which make the application in urban rail transit daily inspection work difficult. Smart inspection robot is based on modular design, self-propulsion, personnel carrier, machine vision, locating calculation and advanced artificial intelligence algorithms. Real-time detection and alarm of relevant defects in urban rail transit track work inspection is realized and digitalized management can be carried out on the detected defects using defect database. Applying the proposed robot in the daily inspection of track work operation-maintenance can greatly reduce inspection labour intensity; recognizing various defects accurately with smart defect detection technology can elevate inspection efficiency and prevent serious defects in advance; new mode of robot inspection-digitalized defect management can lower track work operation-maintenance cost drastically. Adopting smart inspection robot can lower cost and elevate efficiency for urban rail transit operation, assisting in promoting construction and development of smart urban rail transit.