Unmanned Robot System for Structure Health Monitoring and Non-Destructive Building In spectio n, Current Technologies Overview and Future Improvements

摘要

Inspection is a major issue with respect to the integrity and health of engineeringstructures. Many of those structures deteriorate at locations that are difficult to assess(for example a roof of a very tall building). State-of-the-art inspection methods aremostly visual inspections completed by trained inspectors, where inspections are timeconsuming, costly and dangerous. In order to reduce the risk and cost and increase theaccuracy of inspection/monitoring, unmanned robotic systems (aerial or ground based)can therefore be of invaluable help. The research groups at both Fraunhofer IZFP andSaarland University have carried out experiments using micro aerial vehicles equippedwith an off the shelf camera for building inspection and structural health monitoringover years. Many of the state-of-the-art technologies regarding image processing,robotics and 3D model reconstruction have been tested and evaluated with realengineering applications. The first part of this paper will be discussing our experience,the limitation of state-of-the-art technologies and experimental results of buildinginspection/monitoring, which includes methods of displaying image results in both 2Dand 3D. Based on the results of the first part, the second part of the paper will focus onthe improvement of image acquisition and stabilization. The last part of the paper willbe discussing how other developments in robotics system (both aerial and ground)have a potential to fulfill future requirements in terms of building infrastructure lifecycle management.