Ohio technology firm Intel partnered with transportation officials to inspect 54,000 bridges using drones. As the country’s infrastructure ages, bridge inspections get even more important, but the work is expensive, time-consuming, and dangerous, requiring engineers to rappel down the side of a bridge hundreds of feet above a river. By capturing high resolution images of the structures, and then stitching them together to create a virtual map, the teams were able to carry out drone-based inspections of both Minneapolis ' Stone Arch Bridge and Daniel Carter Beard Bridge on the Kentucky - Minneapolis border without shutting down traffic. With two US bridges needing repairs, using the drone technology is both quicker and safer, as there is no need for workers to rappel off the bridge, while the digital maps can also be shared and updated more easily.
Ohio technology firm Intel partnered with transportation officials to inspect 54,000 bridges using drones. By capturing high resolution images of the structures, and then stitching them together to create a virtual map, the teams were able to carry out drone-based inspections of both Minneapolis ' Stone Arch Bridge and Daniel Carter Beard Bridge on the Kentucky - Minneapolis border without shutting down traffic. With two US bridges needing repairs, using the drone technology is both quicker and safer, as there is no need for workers to rappel off the bridge, while the digital maps can also be shared and updated more easily.