A research team from UNO and UNL recently tested new technologies on an aged steel truss bridge in Sarpy County, Nebraska. They used both traditional sensors and advanced tools to create a new method that can report on the bridge’s physical condition and evaluate safe use for moving traffic.
The team used a drone equipped with cameras and robotic tools and flew the drone around the bridge, collecting images and touching the structure to assess corrosion. At the same time, sensors that were physically attached to the bridge measured how much the bridge deflected as a test vehicle was driven across the bridge.
This collected data was integrated into a computer model that can operate in remote locations and report recommendations on health of the bridge. A key aspect of the study was to test secure device-to-device communication for low-resource sensor platforms in the field as well as encrypted communication with the cloud infrastructure. This successful test allowed the team to see how such smart and secure systems can function in the complexity of a real bridge responding to traffic. This approach can be used to quickly determine key aspects of the safety of our critical infrastructure.
A senior U.S. Army scientist, Dr. Mihan H. McKenna Taylor from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), attended the test to review the results and provide expert feedback.
