Real-time comprehensive image processing system for detecting concrete bridges crack

Cracks are an important distress of concrete bridges, and may reduce the life and safety of bridges. However, the traditional manual crack detection means highly depend on the experience of inspectors. Furthermore, it is time-consuming, expensive, and often unsafe when inaccessible position of bridge is to be assessed, such as viaduct pier. To solve this question, the real-time automatic crack detecting system with unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) become a choice. This paper designs a new automatic detection system based on real-time comprehensive image processing for bridge crack. It has small size, light weight, low power consumption and can be carried on a small UAV for real-time data acquisition and processing. The real-time comprehensive image processing algorithm used in this detection system combines the advantage of connected domain area, shape extremum, morphology and support vector data description (SVDD). The performance and validity of the proposed algorithm and system are verified. Compared with other detection method, the proposed system can effectively detect cracks with high detection accuracy and high speed. The designed system in this paper is suitable for practical engineering applications.