Targetless displacement measurement of RSW based on monocular vision and feature matching

Real-time monitoring of the behavior of reinforced soil retaining wall (RSW) is required for safety checks. In this study, a targetless displacement measurement technology (TDMT) consisting of an image registration module and a displacement calculation module was proposed to monitor the behavior of RSW, in which facing displacement and settlement typically occur. Laboratory and field experiments were conducted to compare the measuring performance of natural target (NT) with the performance of artificial target (AT). Feature count- and location-based performance metrics and displacement calculation performance were analyzed to determine their correlations. The results of laboratory and field experiments showed that the feature location-based performance metric was more relevant to the displacement calculation performance than the feature count-based performance metric. The mean relative errors of the TDMT were less than 1.69 % and 5.50 % for the laboratory and field experiments, respectively. The proposed TDMT can accurately monitor the behavior of RSW for real-time safety checks.