A Lightweight Imaged Based Bridge Inspection System Using Fishing Pole, Fishing Line and Fisheye Camera

Visual inspection is currently the major approach to evaluate the structural condition of a bridge. Some researchers have done good work on applying special inspection vehicles and robot arms to increase the efficiency and reachability of inspection process. However, such heavy equipment is highly restricted in working space and is hard to deploy. In this research, we designed and implemented a portable device to facilitate the inspection. The proposed system is lightweight (approx. 350g), including fisheye lens, a camera and a transmitter for real-time transmission of inspection data. We rig the system using a fishing pole. This cable-based design greatly reduces the weight of the inspection system, allowing inspectors to carry and deploy the device easily. A software system, which can control the motion of device and process the vision information gathered from the camera, was also developed for a laptop computer. The proposed system is expected to replace and enhance current bridge inspection methods.