23. Augmented Reality for Next Generation Infrastructure Inspections

Most infrastructure in America is approaching or has exceeded the intended design life. As infrastructure ages, danger is presented to the citizens and the environment. Disasters like the failure of the Oroville Dam emphasize the importance of preventing failure of infrastructure. Despite Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) emerging as the key discipline to evaluate the integrity of structures, human-based visual inspections remain the dominant technique. Main factors behind the slow adoption of the SHM technology are its high installation and maintenance costs, the low confidence level of decision makers in the technology, and the structural community’s familiarity with visual inspections. One major drawback to visual inspection is that it can be highly subjective, relying on a small number of manually recorded data points. Inspectors use tape measures, digital cameras, and human senses. These tools are inadequate to capture and document the state of infrastructure at the resolution needed for tracking damage progression. When working with infrastructure, it is desirable to have high-resolution measurement techniques to detect, localize, and characterize the state of a structure. The present work investigates Augmented Reality (AR) to minimize visual inspection drawbacks. AR is a technology that can superimpose holograms onto the real world. In this work an AR headset is used to enhance the ability of human inspectors to perform infrastructure inspections. The headset features RGB and depth cameras, accelerometers, wireless communication, microphones, and stereo sound. These sensors can capture a high-resolution 3D measurement of the infrastructure being inspected along with RGB photos that can be overlaid on the geometry. The 3D measurement can be used to analyze the state of the structure over time, and track damage progression. The 3D model can also be used as a base to overlay data captured with diverse sensors. The proposed technique will ultimately improve inspectors’ ability to assess risk on site, make informed decisions faster, analyze defect growth over time, and create high-resolution documentation of structural inspections that will reduce the variability that occurs. Overall, AR is a promising technique for infrastructure inspection, mapping infrastructure on site, generating models, and providing consistency between inspectors. This technology has considerable potential for improving the quality of infrastructure inspections.