A Brief Overview and Future Perspective of Unmanned Aerial Systems for In-Service Structural Health Monitoring

摘要

Remote sensing with Unmanned Aerial Systems (UASs) is a game-changer in various fields such as environmental monitoring, surveillance, aerial photography, digital communications, search and rescue operations and military. This paper presents one of the most economical and yet the most effective approaches used in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). Herein, a review of the recent advances, applications and future perspective of UASs, i.e. drones in SHM is discussed. Drones have become popular in several developed countries in recent years. However, the use of drones is still in the infancy stage of development in developing countries. The development of drones in the last decade has marked a new era in remote sensing, providing data of unprecedented spatial, spectral, and temporal resolution. This is due to the fact that UASs are low cost aerial robots, that require little preparation and infrastructure and can be equipped with any number of sensors or cameras making them ideal for monitoring the environment. To this end, drones offer an opportunity to infrastructures the existing gap between field observations and remote sensing by providing high spatial detail over relatively large areas in a cost-effective way.