Grants and Contributions:

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

Infrastructel is an engineering consulting firm operating in Quebec. One type of projects that they are workingx000D
on are in surveying access wells. Access wells are underground concrete spaces used by utility companies tox000D
store maintain and update urban infrastructure such as power lines, internet lines, etc. These undergroundx000D
spaces are hazardous and only accessible to specially trained engineers. Moreover, access to these spaces tendx000D
to also impede traffic and create other public inconveniences. Therefore, technologies to reduce the access tox000D
these wells to a minimum are needed. Infrastructel has developed in 2014 a technology that minimizes thex000D
access time to the access well by taking 360 degree pictures of the well and streaming it back to the officex000D
where it can be analyzed remotely in an offline fashion. Engineers of Infrastructel have won a prestigiousx000D
engineering award in Quebec for this technology that is now widely used in the industry. However, onex000D
important limitation is that while the 360 degree imagery allows qualitative visual analysis of the wells, it isx000D
rather difficult to obtain quantitative information such as distance measurements. In this project we develop ax000D
novel technology based on inexpensive hybrid cameras (depth plus colour) to acquire and stream both 360x000D
imagery of the well along with geometric (point cloud) information. This will enable the engineers to remotelyx000D
analyze the scene both visually, say crack identification, and quantitatively through distance measurements, onx000D
the point cloud.x000D
We will work closely with the company to incorporate the results into their products. This project is ofx000D
significant benefit to Canada. Currently, as pointed out by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself, the Canadianx000D
infrastructure system is in dire need of maintenance and repair. This is made more complicated by lack ofx000D
skilled labor and efficient tools. This project goes a long way in facilitating this on-going demand by providingx000D
useful and inexpensive tools in the hands of Canadian infrastructure engineers.