Real-Time Structural Inspection Using Augmented Reality

Most existing infrastructure, such as bridges, buildings, dams, and culverts, is approaching the end of their service lives due to age, increased operational load, and adverse weather. According to a recent infrastructure report card, North America’s infrastructure is assessed as “at-risk.” This impaired infrastructure threatens nation’s ability to grow its population, quality of life, and economy. Despite advancements in structural health monitoring (SHM) technology, there are several implementation challenges, including prolonged closure of the facility, expensive and time-intensive sensor installation, and access to instrumentation. To eliminate accessibility issues with sensor placement during normal operations or post-disaster inspection, an Augmented Reality (AR)-based SHM strategy is explored in this study. The AR headset is made of an RGB camera, depth imager, IMUs, microphones, onboard processing, and wireless communication links. It captures high-resolution and 3D measurements that are free of human errors and ambiguity and creates a 3D map of surrounding images with accurate distance measurements. It enables tracking and visualizing the position and motion of the user and devices as well as mapping the environmental and surrounding objects and structures. In this paper, the AR device is programmed to inspect cracks and their severity in civil structures. It is shown how this device is used to detect the severity of cracks in various structures, such as bridges and buildings.