Developing a Safe and Cost-Effective Flight Control Methodology for a UAV-Enabled Bridge Inspection

This project proposes to use Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)-based bridge inspections to provide an economical and safer alternative to conventional inspection practices. The main challenge is that most existing technologies rely on general-purpose UAV platforms and there is no verified methodology for UAV-enabled bridge inspection principles and relevant considerations to reliably obtain inspection data. Hence, the goal of this multidisciplinary project is to address the complex nature of flying UAVs in close proximity of bridges by (1) testing and evaluating the performance of commercially available platforms for bridge inspection, and (2) developing robust flight control techniques to enhance the performance of the UAVs to handle high turbulent flows around bridges, taking into account bridge types, terrain characteristics, and weather information. The outcome of this project provides decision-makers with a step by step UAV-based bridge inspection procedures that can be extended to a variety of bridge designs and bridge environments. The findings from this project will help improving bridge inspection practices by achieving the following objectives:  (1) developing measurable metrics to evaluate the performance of UAVs for bridge inspection and (2) designing experiments to test the UAVs for bridge inspection in the first phase, and (3) comprehensively analyzing the near-bridge environment flow fields and (4) designing, prototyping, and implementing advanced and robust flight control systems to carry remote sensing equipment in the second phase. Such kind of robust flight control system improves the quality of collected data through a stable flight system and enables conducting post-analysis of the acquired information for bridges’ health diagnostics and assessment of their residual life. More importantly, the outcome of this project reduces work accident risks, inspection costs and time, and required logistics.

• Record URL:
  http://connect.ncdot.gov/projects/research/Pages/ProjectSearch.aspx
• Record URL:
  http://connect.ncdot.gov/projects/research/Pages/ProjDetails.aspx?ProjectID=2020-23

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $259861.00
• Contract Numbers:

  FHWA/NC/2020-23

• Sponsor Organizations:

  North Carolina Department of Transportation

  Research and Development
  1549 Mail Service Center
  Raleigh, NC  United States  27699-1549
• Managing Organizations:

  North Carolina Department of Transportation

  Research and Development
  1549 Mail Service Center
  Raleigh, NC  United States  27699-1549
• Project Managers:

  Kadibhai, Mustan

• Performing Organizations:

  NC A&T State University

  Department of Electrical Engineering
  Greensboro, North Carolina  United States  27411
• Principal Investigators:

  Karimoddini, Ali

• Start Date: 20190801
• Expected Completion Date: 20201130
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• Source Data: 2020-23

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Bridges; Drones; Flight control systems; Flow fields; Inspection; Metrics (Quantitative assessment)
• Subject Areas: Bridges and other structures; Highways; Maintenance and Preservation; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01724938
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: North Carolina Department of Transportation
• Contract Numbers: FHWA/NC/2020-23
• Files: RIP, STATEDOT
• Created Date: Dec 11 2019 3:54PM