Development of a Bridge Inspection Support System Using Two-Wheeled Multicopter and 3D Modeling Technology

Recently, many countries have faced serious problems associated with aging civil infrastructures such as bridges, tunnels, dams, highways and so on. Aging infrastructures are increasing year by year and suitable maintenance actions are necessary to maintain their safety and serviceability. In fact, infrastructure deterioration has caused serious problems in the past. In order to prevent accidents with civil infrastructures, supervisors must spend a lot of money to maintain the safe conditions of infrastructures. Therefore, new technologies are required to reduce maintenance costs. In 2014 the Japanese government started the Cross-Ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (SIP), and technologies for infrastructure maintenance have been studied in the SIP project [1]. Fujitsu Limited, Hokkaido University, The University of Tokyo, Nagoya Institute of Technology and Docon Co. Limited have been engaged in the SIP project to develop a bridge inspection support system using information technology and robotic technology. Our system is divided into the following two main parts: bridge inspection support robots using a two-wheeled multicopter, and an inspection data management system utilizing 3D modeling technology. In this paper, we report the bridge inspection support system developed in our SIP project.