LOW-COST UAS PHOTOGRAMMETRY FOR ROAD INFRASTRUCTURES’ INSPECTION

Abstract

All over the world, road infrastructures are getting closer to their life cycle and need to be constantly inspected: a consistent number of bridges are structurally deficient, and the risk of collapse can no longer be excluded. In contrast with the past, the interest in structure durability has recently grown rapidly. In order to make bridges durable, it is necessary to carry out ordinary maintenance, preceded by inspection activities, which can be traditionally divided in two categories: destructive and non-destructive (NDT). All the NDT inspections (visual, IR thermography, GPR) can be conducted by using UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems), a technology that makes bridges inspections quicker, cheaper, objective and repeatable. This study presents the visual inspection and survey of two bridges by using a UAS DJI Mavic 2 Pro, equipped with a 20Mpixel Hasselblad camera that records 60fps 4K video and a 10bit radiometric resolution. Starting from the acquired data, a 3D model of each structure was built by using Structure from Motion (SfM) principles and software. To validate the two models, each of them characterized by a centimetric accuracy, the UAS camera generated cloud of points and was co-registered with the point cloud of a terrestrial laser-scanner using Ground Control Points (GCPs). To make this, CloudCompare comparison software was used; the plugin M3C2 automatically calculates the distance between the points of two compared clouds. Finally, some general rules concerning the UAS main characteristics for inspection of bridges and software for data processing are proposed.