Development of an automatic inspection system for flatness of bridge concrete slabs

Abstract

The infrastructure industry faces a variety of pressing issues, such as the aging of the population and the shortage of human resources due to a shrinking workforce, that need to be solved by DX technology. In particular, laser scanner and point cloud analysis technologies have evolved remarkably, and it is now possible to convert the surrounding environment into a point cloud with high accuracy and in a short time, and automatically calculate the desired values. In this paper, we focus on the flatness inspection of concrete slabs of bridges, and develop a technology to instantly calculate the height of slabs by using a ground-based laser scanner and automatic point cloud analysis technology with Infracapture, instead of the conventional method of measuring the height of slabs at a huge number of measurement points.

The developed system was compared with conventional methods and evaluated in terms of accuracy and inspection time. As a result, the system succeeded in reducing measurement time by 88% while ensuring accuracy, and was found to make a significant contribution to the reduction of physical workload.