You are here: Home Chair for Monitoring … Research Inspection of artificial and …

Inspection of artificial and natural objects

Artificial objects such as engineering constructions, e.g. bridges, tunnels, and infrastructure elements, like roads, railway lines, and natural objects, e.g. dams, slopes, forest areas, make up a significant part of our environment. The regular inspection and monitoring of these objects is essential for the safety and understanding of our environment. Today, the use of multitudes of different systems is common, from tactile to optical to embedded sensors. The summary of the research and development goals in this area appears as follows:

  • Research and development of novel optical system, e.g. laser scanners,  3D cameras, for the recording and monitoring of the 3D geometry of artificial and natural objects.
  • Research and development of sensor implementations on mobile platforms including referencing – orientation and positioning – for rapid, highly accurate object monitoring.
  • Research and development of distributed sensor systems for the cooperative recording of 3D geometry.
  • Fusion of different sensors, e.g. laser scanner, camera, ultrasound, radar, to novel multi-sensor systems.

Using mobile or stationary optical sensors makes highly accurate (3D) structural monitoring of complete objects possible. Mobile systems are realized using carrier platform UAVs ("Unmanned Aerial Vehicles"), robots or humans. The generated data serves for a change analysis (deformation analysis) over time and as a digital map for the identification of potential damage areas. Aside from the use of optical sensors to record surface characteristics of an object, the fusion with sensors that make it possible to draw conclusions about the structure of the object also plays an important role