A Comparative Study of Bridge Inspection and Condition Assessment between Manpower and a UAS

Abstract

As the number of old bridges increases, the number of bridges with structural defects is also increasing. Timely inspection and maintenance of bridges are required because structural degradation is accelerated after bridge damage. Recently, in the field of structural health monitoring, a bridge inspection using an unmanned aerial vehicle system (UAS) is receiving a lot of attention. In this paper, UAS-based automatic damage detection and bridge condition evaluation were performed on existing bridges. From the process of preparing for inspection to the management of inspection data, the entire bridge inspection process was performed through field tests. The necessary element techniques for each stage were explained and the results were confirmed. Finally, UAS-based results were compared with conventional human-based visual inspection results. As a result, it was confirmed that the UAS-based bridge inspection is faster and more objective than the existing technology. Therefore, it was confirmed that the automatic bridge inspection method based on unmanned aerial vehicles can be applied to the field as a promising technology.