Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2018-2019)

The intention of this research program is to utilize unmanned drones or autonomous robots for inspecting bridges. It is required by law to inspect every bridge at least twice a year. Canada has a vast network of bridges that are aging. As part of this research program, the applicant will investigate design of autonomous robots, and develop a network of systems that would link to a cloud based system. There, images are analyzed and interpreted based on pre-existing images of the same unit or similar structures.

The novelty of this research program is in its particular integration of different fields of research to facilitate inspection. These fields are: Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, and Data science. To the best knowledge of the applicant this is the first time in Canada that drones and autonomous robots are considered for bridge inspections. Drones and autonomous robots can offer an efficient, accurate and safe way to inspect bridges without putting the inspector at risk of falling and injury. If successful, the outcome allows easy inspection of hard-to-reach places. A specific image processing algorithm will be utilized to fuse images taken by drones or autonomous robots into 2D and 3D images. An extensive and automated database will be built to allow year-over-year image and sensory data imposition to detect minor changes in the structure of the bridge. This is the first time Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) techniques would be utilized for bridge inspection. Short-range and long-range wireless technology will be deployed to collect information.