Development of a Vision-Based Embedded System for Monitoring of Bridge Settlement
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 30, Issue 2
Abstract
The assessment of bridge settlements is a challenging and significant problem. Moreover, aging of highway bridges is a growing concern in the US, especially when continuous monitoring is lacking. To facilitate expedient monitoring of bridges, this paper presents a projected laser system (PLS) method for monitoring that can autonomously measure and remotely report relative vertical settlements of bridges. The method uses a vision-based measurement system involving the projection of a laser pattern from a laser unit to a target unit. A cost-effective prototype implementing the PLS method was built using low-cost electronic hardware parts. The prototype of the proposed embedded system design was shown to have sub-millimeter accuracy in a laboratory experiment, and was deployed in the field to monitor a pedestrian–vehicle bridge to evaluate its overall performance.
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Data Availability Statement
All codes and data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the PEER Center and Caltrans through the PEER Lifelines Research Program Contract 65A0549 Task Order TO-4: Bridge Vulnerability and Design, Sub-Task 7C: Foundation Settlement Monitoring System. We thank Caltrans engineers Tom Shantz and Sharon Yen for their assistance during the proposal writing and development phase of this project. The Taisei Chair of Civil Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley provided additional financial resources. The authors thank Amarnath Kasalanati, Phillip Wong, Clement Barthes, Albert Qu, and Wyeth Binder for their technical input throughout this study.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 30 • Issue 2 • June 2024
Copyright
© 2024 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 25, 2023
Accepted: Jan 2, 2024
Published online: Mar 18, 2024
Published in print: Jun 1, 2024
Discussion open until: Aug 18, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Bridge engineering
- Bridge tests
- Bridges
- Bridges (by type)
- Business management
- Construction engineering
- Construction management
- Engineering fundamentals
- Equipment and machinery
- Field tests
- Financial management
- Foundation settlement
- Foundations
- Geotechnical engineering
- Highway bridges
- Lasers
- Practice and Profession
- Project management
- Structural engineering
- Structural settlement
- Tests (by type)
Authors
Metrics & Citations
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