Autonomous 3D vision‐based bolt loosening assessment using micro aerial vehicles

Abstract

Earlier identification of bolt loosening is crucial to maintain structural integrity and prevent system‐level collapse. In this study, a novel drone‐based 3D vision methodology has been proposed for autonomous bolt loosening assessment. First, a low‐cost micro aerial vehicle with various types of sensors is designed. Second, a drone‐based autonomous image collection method is proposed. Third, a 3D point cloud of the bolted connection is generated using the acquired images. Fourth, 3D point cloud processing methods are proposed to localize and quantify bolt loosening. The proposed method has been implemented on structural beam–column connections. The results show that the proposed drone‐based data collection method can effectively acquire images for 3D reconstruction. The 3D point cloud processing methods can reliably localize and quantify bolt loosening at high accuracy. The proposed method provides a more robust and comprehensive evaluation of bolt loosening, compared to existing 2D vision methods, which process 2D images captured at a specific camera view.

A novel anti-loosening bolt looseness diagnosis of bolt connections using a vision-based technique

“…However, the relationship between the loosening angle and the exposed length of the screw is still unclear. Pan et al 32 , 33 proposed a bolt looseness detection method based on 3D vision. The bolts in the 3D model are located and extracted based on the CNN convolutional neural network and point cloud processing algorithm, and the height of the screw is used to determine whether the screw is loose.…”

Pixel‐Level Crack Identification for Bridge Concrete Structures Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Photography and Deep Learning

“…Beneftting from its simple operation, fexible maneuverability, and excellent performance, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)based photography technology is suitable for performing tasks in complex scenes [8][9][10]. Moreover, in the past few years, autonomous UAV inspection technology and its related obstacle-avoidance method have been proposed and gradually applied to the feld of SHM [11,12]. Because of this, UAV-based aerial photography technology plays an important role in the daily inspection of civil infrastructure and the identifcation of potential diseases [10].…”

Autonomous flight strategy of an unmanned aerial vehicle with multimodal information for autonomous inspection of overhead transmission facilities

“…A modular and generic system was proposed through computer vision to improve the decision‐making processes of UAVs (Alsalam et al., 2017). A flight method was proposed to assess bolt loosening of infrastructure (Pan et al., 2023). Additionally, in odometry perspective, studies have been conducted to estimate the position and orientation of UAVs, including robust visual‐inertial odometry for fast autonomous flight (Sun et al., 2018) and Red, Green, Blue ‐ Depth (RGB‐D) camera‐based visual positioning system (H. Zhang et al., 2021).…”