Progress in autonomous building inspection drone development for scanning exterior damage of buildings

Abstract

Structures over time are prone to having damages and faults on exterior surfaces. Current methods for analyzing buildings for defects are time consuming and potentially dangerous for the inspector. At higher altitudes, additional safety measures must be taken. In order to streamline the exterior surface inspection process, a drone with manual and autonomous flight capabilities is being developed by multidisciplinary faculty members and undergraduate students at Texas A&M University through a Capstone project. The drone will record video and sensor data during operation. In this first phase of the development, the team has been creating a building infrastructure research drone which can monitor the exterior of the buildings for a vertical scanning task. The details of the building analysis drone development effort are presented in this paper.