Derek Doyle

Jiaqi Xu, Elijah Wyckoff, John-Wesley Hanson et al.

In recent years, augmented reality (AR) technology has been increasingly employed in structural health monitoring (SHM). In the case of conditions following a seismic event, inspections are conducted to evaluate the progression of the damage pattern quantitatively and efficiently respond if the displacement pattern is determined to be unsafe. Additionally, quantification of nearby structural changes over short-term and long-term periods can provide building inspectors with information to improve safety. This paper proposes the Time Machine Measure (TMM) application on an Augmented Reality (AR) Head-Mounted-Device (HMD) platform. The main function of the TMM application is to restore the saved meshes of a past environment and overlay them onto the real environment so that inspectors can intuitively measure structural deformation and other movement across time. The proposed TMM application was verified by experiments meant to simulate a real-world inspection.

M. Aguero, D. Doyle, D. Mascarenas et al.

Wireless Smart Sensors (WSS) process field data and inform structural engineers and owners about the infrastructure health and safety. In bridge engineering, inspectors make decisions using objective data from each bridge. They decide about repairs and replacements and prioritize the maintenance of certain structure elements on the basis of changes in displacements under loads. However, access to displacement information in the field and in real-time remains a challenge. Displacement data provided by WSS in the field undergoes additional processing and is seen at a different location by an inspector and a sensor specialist. When the data is shared and streamed to the field inspector, there is a inter-dependence between inspectors, sensor specialists, and infrastructure owners, which limits the actionability of the data related to the bridge condition. If inspectors were able to see structural displacements in real-time at the locations of interest, they could conduct additional observations, which would create a new, information-based, decision-making reality in the field. This paper develops a new, human-centered interface that provides inspectors with real-time access to actionable structural data (real-time displacements under loads) during inspection and monitoring enhanced by Augmented Reality (AR). It summarizes the development and validation of the new human-infrastructure interface and evaluates its efficiency through laboratory experiments. The experiments demonstrate that the interface accurately estimates dynamic displacements in comparison with the laser. Using this new AR interface tool, inspectors can observe and compare displacement data, share it across space and time, and visualize displacements in time history.

Jiaqi Xu, Derek Doyle, Fernando Moreu

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology superimposing interactional virtual objects onto a real environment. Since the beginning of the millennium, AR technologies have shown rapid growth, with significant research publications in engineering and science. However, the civil infrastructure community has minimally implemented AR technologies to date. One of the challenges that civil engineers face when understanding and using AR is the lack of a classification of AR in the context of capabilities for civil infrastructure applications. Practitioners in civil infrastructure, like most engineering fields, prioritize understanding the level of maturity of a new technology before considering its adoption and field implementation. This paper compares the capabilities of sixteen AR Head-Mounted Devices (HMDs) available in the market since 2017, ranking them in terms of performance for civil infrastructure implementations. Finally, the authors recommend a development framework for practical AR interfaces with civil infrastructure and operations.