Smart structural health monitoring using computer vision and edge computing

Abstract

Structural health monitoring (SHM) provides real-time data on the condition and performance of infrastructure, enabling timely and cost-effective maintenance interventions, and hence enhanced safety and extended service life. The computer vision-based non-contact sensor has emerged as a promising alternative to conventional contact-type sensors for structural displacement measurement and SHM. Many of the currently reported vision-based structural displacement measurement systems typically temporarily set up a video camera from a distance to the structure. The collected images or videos are usually stored locally and post-processed offline to obtain structural displacement responses, which is cumbersome and limited to short-term SHM applications. The recent development of technologies empowered by the Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing has enabled real-time video processing and analysis at the source, minimizing latency, reducing bandwidth requirements, and enabling prompt decision-making, thereby enhancing efficiency and responsiveness compared to traditional offline video recording and processing systems. In this paper, an edge computing vision-based displacement measurement system (EdgeCVDMS) is developed. Video recording, processing, and displacement response identification are entirely performed on an edge device integrated with the vision-based displacement tracking algorithm, thereby greatly reducing the amount of data transmitted to the cloud server. The feasibility and applicability of the developed sensing system are experimentally validated on a laboratory-scaled transmission tower structure. The proposed EdgeCVDMS is cost-effective, easily deployable, and of great potential to be applied for the condition assessment of a larger population of aging civil infrastructure.