ECE.18R – AeroInsight: Drone Crack Detection for Better Building Maintenance

• Gilles Kone
• Connor Luttrell
• Kaushal Patel
• Patrick Sutherlin

The surfaces of high-rise buildings and the undersides of bridges are important parts of these structures that must be examined for safety purposes. This is often a difficult task due to these areas being hard to reach or involving tough environments. The aging of large structures has become a global concern, with falling debris and structural health being heavily considered. Drone use has been a new method of examination, but they have limitations with reaching and stabilizing in these specific scenarios. A new drone examination method involves a small drone that gets close enough to touch and glide the surfaces for inspection. To handle these challenges, AeroInsight has created a device, the Wallcopter, that streamlines this process of quality control. To combat the structural traversing, wheels have been mounted on top of the drone such that it can glide on the appropriate surface depending upon examination type. The drone has a camera installed that captures images and gives live feed for inspection. The live feed was integrated with crack detection by use of machine learning protocols to efficiently detect cracks based on a local image database. The drone will provide a safer and more efficient means to examine and assess damage of structures, in the long run saving money, time, and lives.