United States Department of Transportation
i
Quantitative sensing of bridges, railways, and tunnels with autonomous unmanned aerial vehicles.
-
2017-05-04
-
By Yu, Tzuyang
[PDF-58.54 MB]
Details:
-
Creators:
-
Corporate Creators:
-
Contributors:
-
Corporate Contributors:
-
Subject/TRT Terms:
-
Resource Type:
-
Geographical Coverage:
-
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.
-
Format:
-
Funding:
-
Collection(s):
-
Main Document Checksum:
-
Download URL:
-
File Type:
