Development of Structural Damage Inspection and Maintenance System Based on Mixed Reality

Abstract

Though automatic structural damage inspection methods based on mobile robots have been rapidly developed recently, they are not able to completely replaced conventional human based inspections due to limitations such as the false alarm of automatic damage detection techniques. In this study, a human centered inspection system with aid of an augmented reality framework is developed in order to improve convenience in inspecting and managing various types of structural damages such as spalling, exposed rebars and efflorescence. The developed system automatically detects and quantifies structural damages, and displays the inspection results in real-time through an augmented reality device. In addition, the previously detected damages are visualized with holographic markers and their information at the exact location. Therefore, an inspector can easily find where the previous damages were and whether the damages become severe or not. The performance of the developed system was validated through a field test and it was revealed that the system can save inspection time and improve convenience by accelerating essential tasks of the inspector such as damage detection, size measurement and finding locations of previous damages and determining whether the damages become severe or not.