Autonomous Defect Inspection and Mapping for Building Maintenance
Publication: Computing in Civil Engineering 2023
ABSTRACT
As structures age, the continuous surveying of defects to structural elements becomes a central part of the life cycle. Automated and frequent inspections could allow for an enriched defect history for faster decisions and reduce the time until problems are first reported. This requires recording the defect on an autonomous platform and automatically classifying areas of interest. We propose and test a prototype that uses a defect segmentation network for classifying defect instances deployed on a Spot mobile robot for autonomous maintenance missions. The robot maps its surroundings using a continuous laser scan and annotates the resulting environment mesh using the defect segmentation network. We test the feasibility of entirely autonomous, repeat missions and the possible use cases of such a system.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Computing in Civil Engineering 2023
Pages: 1039 - 1046
History
Published online: Jan 25, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Aging (material)
- Architectural engineering
- Automation and robotics
- Building management
- Buildings
- Construction engineering
- Construction management
- Continuous structures
- Defects and imperfections
- Deterioration
- Drop structures
- Engineering fundamentals
- Geomatics
- Inspection
- Maintenance and operation
- Mapping
- Materials characterization
- Materials engineering
- Structural engineering
- Structures (by type)
- Surveying methods
- Systems engineering
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