Aerial vehicle based sensing framework for structural health monitoring

Abstract

A novel approach to implement wireless active sensing framework for Structural Health Monitoring is presented using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle as a Mobile Agent. This approach has unique features of critical activity detection, wireless power delivery and measurement and data collection options from the sensor nodes through Zigbee. The active sensing is initiated by wirelessly triggering the sensor node from UAV. UAV provides unrestricted accessibility in various applications for SHM. It carries Beagle Board payload for real-time calculations to check the health of structures. The onboard video camera provides improved analysis of Critical activities like abnormal vibration and structure tilt. It captures video of the area of interest and data measured by any sensor node network. This paper is intended to give sufficient details of the implementation of our approach. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.