Project description
Drones rise up to challenge of bridge and railway inspections
Drones are being used to perform inspections of roadways and railways. Industrial, research and academic experts in infrastructure inspection, energy harvesting, artificial intelligence, communications, and drone technology are joining forces to help increase the safety of the European civil transport system. Through the EU-funded Drones4Safety project, they are building a cooperative, autonomous, self-recharging and continuously operating drone system for autonomous, accurate and frequent inspections of transport infrastructures. This new system will be made available to railway and bridge operators to remotely monitor the status of their infrastructures and notifying them if a fault is detected. The project will use satellite and open maps, and will develop and improve artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to optimise inspection results. Drones4Safety's outcomes will be presented to transportation operators in the form of software services and hardware drone systems.
Objective
The Drones4Safety project aims to increase the safety of the European civil transport system by building a cooperative, autonomous, and continuously operating drone system that will be offered to railway and bridge operators to inspect their transportation infrastructure accurately, frequently, and autonomously. The Drones4Safety approach will design energy harvesters to tap energy from the overhead electricity infrastructures of railways and power lines to recharge drones. The project will use satellite and open maps to identify the parts of the transport infrastructure that lays near the electricity infrastructure and feed that information to its drones for scheduling their autonomous missions. The project will develop and improve the state-of-the-art artificial intelligence algorithms to optimize the inspection results onboard of the drone. The project will build a swarm drone system that uses advanced low power long range communication network techniques to inspect different parts of the infrastructure at the same time. Navigation based on advancements in EGNOS/Galileo GNSS will improve accuracy og geo-location of inspection events. The project’s outcomes will be offered to the transportation operators in forms of software services and hardware drone system.
The project brings together leading industrial, research, and academic experts in infrastructure inspection, energy harvesting, artificial intelligence, communications, and drone technology. Two use cases for bridge and railway inspections will be conducted to evaluate the project outcomes.
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligence
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencessoftware
- social sciencessocial geographytransportnavigation systemssatellite navigation systemglobal navigation satellite system
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringaerospace engineeringsatellite technology
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringroboticsautonomous robotsdrones
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
5230 Odense M
Denmark