SYNTHETIC ENVIRONMENTS FOR FACILITATING FIELD IMPLEMENTATION OF VISION-BASED STRUCTURAL MANAGEMENT TECHNIQUES

Abstract

Vision-based techniques for structural inspection and monitoring have seen significant advances, stimulating innovations in the area. Field implementations of such new methodologies require preliminary investigations, in which the applications of the methods are simulated. Those investigations facilitate the user’s understanding of the methods, and enable the quantitative evaluation and optimization of the method performance. However, specifications and requirements for vision-based inspection and monitoring methods differ significantly, depending on the target structures, environmental conditions, and the expected output data. Analysis and evaluation of new methods under individual application scenarios are therefore not straightforward. In this paper, the authors focus on the computer graphics simulations of structures as a potential solution to the problem, and discuss the application of such simulation to vision-based inspection and monitoring scenarios with examples, as well as the roadmap for the future extensions.