Arial Patrol for Bridge Routine and Post Earthquake Emergency Inspection Using Small Aerial Photography UAV

In this paper, the possibility of use General Purposed UAVs is verified by a series of tests. A smart device based control app is developed based on the Software Development Kit (SDK) released by the UAV maker for developers. The basic performance of UAV for structure inspection such as flight time, flight velocity and wind resistance are evaluated by Payload tests, single pattern flight test, and wind tests. Based on the test results, an emergency inspection simulation is conducted to verify the possibility of used this method in a real bridge. Onsite verification of this method is conducted to inspect a 143m high 400m long steel arch bridges and a steel girder concrete pier bridge with rubber bearings damaged in the recent 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake. Thus, the feasibility of the bridge inspection using small Aerial Photography UAV was verified in this study.