Page 26 - GCN, March and April 2017

EMERGING TECH
BY PATRICK MARSHALL
Putting HoloLens to work inspecting infrastructure
EVERY FEW MONTHS,
Seattle closes the busy and rapidly aging Alaskan Way Viaduct, which runs along the city’s waterfront, while inspectors painstakingly examine the structure and traffic is diverted to city streets and the already congested Interstate 5. Soon, however, mixed- reality software could allow inspectors to do their work from the comfort of their offices — without interrupt- ing traffic.
In collaboration with Trimble and Microsoft, the Construction IT Laboratory at the University of Cam- bridge in England is devel- oping the Bridge Inspector application, which uses Microsoft’s HoloLens as its platform. Ioannis Brilakis, the lab’s director, said that for the prototype software, data collected from a local bridge in Cambridge is ported into the app so that engineers wearing Holo- Lens devices can inspect the structure without leaving the office.
The team is also work- ing on a variety of ways to collect data on a bridge’s condition without shut- ting down roadways so inspectors can take a
close look. Brilakis said drones equipped with high-resolution cameras are a promising solution. The problem is that drones
are not currently allowed to fly over vehicle traffic
in Great Britain, which means collecting data via drones often means closing roadways.
and sensors that can give me the same data but from a distance?”
In addition, the team is developing a Progress Mon- itoring app that processes
ing behind schedule. Brilakis said both ap-
plications open up valuable opportunities for train-
ing inspectors. “HoloLens allows multiple people to use their own...devices and jump into the same room,” he said, “so you could eas- ily have an experienced inspector in the model together with one or more junior inspectors with him training them on how to actually evaluate certain things on the bridge.”
Such training would be especially effective because guidelines for civil engi- neers are somewhat vague, Brilakis said. “It is easy to tell someone to just go and inspect a bridge, but unless you show them what you actually mean by that, you end up with inspectors giv- ing back different answers on the same exact flaws,” he added.
According to Brilakis, Trimble is funding the research, and there is an expectation that the Ph.D. students who are develop- ing the applications will work with the company to commercialize the products after they graduate. He said the university and Trimble are establishing a commer- cialization unit in Cam- bridge that will sponsor the graduates for approximate- ly two years as they work to refine the applications. •
26 GCN MARCH/APRIL 2017 • GCN.COM
Mixed-reality apps combine images and modeling data to enable HoloLens-wearing inspectors to quickly evaluate a structure’s integrity and construction progress.
With support from Trimble, a California-based firm that specializes in
GPS technology and other positioning and monitoring solutions, Brilakis’ team
is working on a fix. The question he posed is: “Can I equip the drone with the kind of telephoto lenses
data into four-dimensional models that construction engineers can superimpose on the real structure using HoloLens technology. It allows engineers to visually inspect construction prog- ress, and elements that are missing are automatically marked in the model as be-