Autonomous Drone Prototype for Bridge Inspection and Maintenance

Details

• Creators:
  Su,Gaofeng ; Yang, Teaya ; Sengupta, Raja ; Mueller, Mark W.
• Corporate Creators:
  University of California, Berkeley
• Corporate Contributors:
  California. Department of Transportation
• Subject/TRT Terms:
  • Bridge management systems
  • Drones
  • Structural health monitoring
  • Navigation systems
  • Global Positioning System
  • Inspection
  • Maintenance
  • Data analysis
  • Prototype tests
  • Performance
  More +
• Publication/ Report Number:
  CA25-4419
• Resource Type:
  Tech Report
• Geographical Coverage:
  United States
• Edition:
  Final Report (March 2024 - February 2025)
• Corporate Publisher:
  California. Department of Transportation
• Abstract:
  This report presents a comprehensive pipeline for the autonomous visual inspection of bridges using drones. It details the architecture of a vision-based autonomous flight stack designed for operation without GPS, alongside the design of the custom drone prototype. The system’s performance is validated through three flight tests, including deployments at two real-world bridge sites, demonstrating the pipeline’s capability to autonomously navigate complex GPS-denied environments and acquire high-quality inspection data.
• Format:
  PDF
• Funding:
  65A0774 Task Order 013
• Download URL:
  https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/90501/dot_90501_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 76.59 MB]
• Collection(s):
  US Transportation Collection
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:35d2f1f242f616b20c9ded31341d4679f3eaa43e0f0e0b5c43530c6ae6547d46f022aff55a2adc371ae3429feca90812fb675739f9df07cc19f712833ce09292