Unmanned aerial system applications in construction: a systematic review

Abstract

Purpose Over the past decade, researchers have used unmanned aerial systems (UASs) in construction industry for various applications from site inspection to safety monitoring or building maintenance. This paper aims to assort academic studies on construction UAS applications, summarize logics behind using UAS in each application and extend understanding of current state of UAS research in the construction setting. Design/methodology/approach This research follows a systematic literature assessment methodology to summarize the results of 54 research papers over the past ten years and outlines the research trends for applying UASs in construction. Findings UASs are used in building inspection, damage assessment, site surveying, safety inspection, progress monitoring, building maintenance and other construction applications. Cost saving, time efficiency and improved accessibility are the primary reasons for choosing UAS in construction applications. Rotary-wing UASs are the most common types of UASs being used in construction. Cameras, LiDAR and Kinect are the most common onboard sensors integrated in construction UAS applications. The control styles used are manual, semi-autonomous and autonomous. Originality/value This paper contributes to classification of UAS applications in construction research and identification of UAS hardware and sensor types as well as their flying control systems in construction literature.

Barriers to adoption of RPAs on construction projects: a task–technology fit perspective

“…Research and industry reports have acknowledged the existence of barriers that hamper the wider adoption of RPAs in the construction context (Dupont et al, 2017;McCabe et al, 2017;McMinn, 2017;Zhou and Gheisari, 2018). With this in mind, this study provides original insight by taking the argument about the barriers to the next level.…”

Systematic Literature Research of the Current Implementation of Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) in the Construction Industry

“…The implementation of UAS is bringing the easiness and time-saving activities into the current jobs task [10]. Some frameworks propose the path to identify the task (Morgenthau et al, 2019) and the requirement that an operation would be required [11] The most valuable benefits of the UAS in the construction industry are related to automation the construction process, low cost, greater speed and safer real-time data collection compared with the traditional methods [12] and a reliable replacement over satellites and manned vehicles in terms of high-resolution images [13]. Technology usually is applied in order to decrease dependency on hand-operated labours, reduce issues of quality, increase productivity and control over asbuilt plans [13].…”

Trends, benefits, and barriers of unmanned aerial systems in the construction industry: a survey study in the United States

“…UASs have been used in a variety of AEC applications from traffic surveillance (Barmpounakis and Geroliminis 2020; Hart and Gharaibeh 2011) and landslide monitoring (Niethammer et al 2012;Yeh and Chuang 2020), to cultural heritage conservation (Enríquez et al 2020;Koutsoudis et al 2014;Uysal et al 2013) and city planning (Banaszek et al 2017;Bulatov et al 2011). Construction, in particular, witnessed an exponential growth in UAS applications, the implementation of which stems from the benefits associated with their capability to access unreachable or unsafe areas, and their ability to perform tasks safely and time-efficiently (Gheisari and Esmaeili 2019;Zhou and Gheisari 2018). In addition, UASs' recent developments in terms of regulation updates, low acquisition costs, enhanced navigation features, autonomous flight capabilities, increased battery life, and variety types of onboard sensors, have played a significant role in their popularity and wide deployment in the construction industry (Hassanalian and Abdelkefi 2017;Zhou and Gheisari 2018).…”

“…Construction, in particular, witnessed an exponential growth in UAS applications, the implementation of which stems from the benefits associated with their capability to access unreachable or unsafe areas, and their ability to perform tasks safely and time-efficiently (Gheisari and Esmaeili 2019;Zhou and Gheisari 2018). In addition, UASs' recent developments in terms of regulation updates, low acquisition costs, enhanced navigation features, autonomous flight capabilities, increased battery life, and variety types of onboard sensors, have played a significant role in their popularity and wide deployment in the construction industry (Hassanalian and Abdelkefi 2017;Zhou and Gheisari 2018). UASs can be adopted through different phases of a construction project from site surveying and mapping (Martinez et al 2021a;Neitzel and Klonowski 2012) and progress monitoring (Álvares and Costa 2019;Unger et al 2014) to building inspection (Eiris et al 2020;González-deSantos et al 2020;Hallermann et al 2015a;Hallermann et al 2015b), and structures maintenance (Mutis and Romero 2019).…”