Author Description

Interest in and use of uncrewed aerial systems (UAS) have increased in the past 10 years. One application of considerable interest to transportation agencies and their private-sector partners is supplementing traditional highway bridge inspection data-collection tools. They have shown particular interest in performing safety inspections of bridge elements that are typically costly for bridge owners. By using UAS, the bridge superstructure and substructure can be assessed without requiring lanes of traffic to close or exposing inspectors to traffic. NCHRP Research Report 1114: Uncrewed Aerial Systems Applications for Bridge Inspections: Element-Level Bridge Data Collection, from TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program, presents strategies for using UAS for collecting element-level data during bridge inspections. Supplemental to the report are a survey, rankings, implementation memo, and roadmap.