Sustainability Leading in the development of sustainable cities and villages through innovation, research, and practice. M A r k e r S A n d M i l e S to n e S 1989 The Civil Engineering Institute is established 1997 Department of Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering is established 1999 Dewberry Chair for Civil, Environmental, and Infrastructure Engineering is established 2012 CEIE renamed to honor Sid and Reva Dewberry 2014 Hazel Endowed Chair for CEIE established
What the Drone Sees—
Developing Accurate, Reliable Data for Robotic Bridge and Tunnel Inspection for Sustainable Infrastructure Assistant professor David Lattanzi knows how dangerous bridge inspection can be because he has done it. Prior to completing his PhD, he was a structural engineer at Gannett Fleming, a frm specializing in international planning, design, and construction management, where he inspected and was responsible for the rehabilitation design of automobile and railroad bridges, tunnels, and other structures.
"Most of the nation's highways, bridges, and tunnels were built to last about 75 years. The big postwar building boom was in the 1950s so these structures are nearing the end of their life span," says Lattanzi. "The cost and difculty of inspecting and repairing them will demand that we think of new ways to attack this problem."
Anyone who has ever tried to navigate a busy street or drive an interstate highway when roadwork is going on knows that traditional repair methods can be a slow and cumbersome process. These methods use heavy, expensive equipment and often place workers in life-threatening situations. "If we can develop safe, cost-efective, and accurate robotic inspection tools, we can eliminate many of the dangers of this hazardous work," says Lattanzi. That's where robots can help. But as they become a more accepted tool for infrastructure inspection, it becomes important to consider how humans will interact with the information that those same robots capture. Lattanzi and his team see this as a data representation problem. If the data are not clearly
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