Development of a structural inspection system with marking damage information at onsite based on an augmented reality technique

Abstract

Although unmanned aerial vehicles have been used to overcome the limited accessibility of human-based visual inspection, unresolved issues still remain. Onsite inspectors face difficulty finding previously detected damage locations and tracking their status onsite. For example, an inspector still marks the damage location on a target structure with chalk or drawings while comparing the current status of existing damages to their previous status, as documented onsite. In this study, an augmented-reality-based structural inspection system with onsite damage information marking was developed to enhance the convenience of inspectors. The developed system detects structural damage, creates a holographic marker with damage information on the actual physical damage, and displays the marker onsite via an augmented reality headset. Because inspectors can view a marker with damage information in real time on the display, they can easily identify where the previous damage has occurred and whether the size of the damage is increasing. The performance of the developed system was validated through a field test, demonstrating that the system can enhance convenience by accelerating the inspector's essential tasks such as detecting damages, measuring their size, manually recording their information, and locating previous damages.