Quantitative sensing of bridges, railways, and tunnels with autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles.

Details

• Creators:
  Yu, Tzuyang
• Corporate Creators:
  University of Massachusetts at Lowell
• Contributors:
  Singh, Caesar
• Corporate Contributors:
  United States. Department of Transportation. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Bridges
  • Railroads
  • Tunnels
  • Inspection
  • Remote sensing
  • Monitoring
  • Drone aircraft
  • Transportation infrastructure
  • infrastructure inspection and monitoring
  • unmanned aerial vehicle sensing system
  More +
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Abstract:
  Managing a growing population of deteriorated transportation infrastructure ; systems (i.e. bridges, railways, tunnels) is one of biggest challenges faced by the nation. ; Traditional inspection and monitoring techniques (e.g., visual inspection, mechanical ; sounding, rebound hammer, cover meter, electrical potential measurements, ultrasound, ; ground penetrating radar) for bridges, railways, and tunnels require lane closure and are ; labor intensive and time-consuming. Existing remote sensing techniques (e.g., LiDAR, ; aerial photos) using fixed-wing aircraft are capable of conducting large-area inspection ; but are constrained by viewing areas accessible only from above, at a large distance, and ; are not capable of inspecting all areas of interest (e.g., bridge piers, bridge girder bottom, ; and tunnel walls). Automated, low-cost, efficient inspection techniques for interrogating ; critical components of bridges, railways, and tunnels are needed. The objective of this ; project is to develop a system-level, decision-support unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) ; sensing system for the autonomous, efficient inspection of bridges, railways, and tunnels, ; using radar, digital image correlation, and thermal sensors. The proposed UAV sensing ; system represents the next generation of rapid, low-cost interrogation technology for ; infrastructure inspection and monitoring of critical transportation infrastructure. ; In this final report, major research achievements and findings from our conducted ; tasks are summarized and reported. Additional technical details in our research tasks can ; be found in submitted quarterly reports. The objective of this project is to develop an ; unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) system that can be used to autonomously interrogate ; numerous areas on civil structures easily without requiring expensive, time consuming ; aerial lifts or inconsistent visual inspections. The proposed sensing platform includes ; innovative continuous wave imaging radar and digital image correlation to monitor ; structures or quantify damage. This project represents the next generation of localized, ; autonomous inspection and monitoring methods using robotic platform.
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• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  OASRTRS-14-H-UML
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/32307/dot_32307_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 58.54 MB]
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha256:6c63454a807706adba0f7f8fbb76886c1daee7fb6a1bd2d8a12e783ef427e292