State of the art of augmented reality capabilities for civil infrastructure applications

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology superimposes interactional virtual objects onto a real environment. Since the beginning of the millennium, AR technologies have rapidly grown, with significant research publications in engineering and science. However, the civil infrastructure community has minimally implemented AR technologies to date. Civil engineers face one of the challenges when understanding and using AR is the lack of a classification of AR in the context of capabilities for civil infrastructure applications. Like most engineering fields, practitioners in civil infrastructure prioritize understanding a new technology's maturity level before considering its adoption and field implementation. This article compares the capabilities of 16 AR head‐mounted devices (HMDs) available in the market since 2017, ranking them in terms of performance for civil infrastructure implementations. Finally, the authors recommend a development framework for functional AR interfaces with civil infrastructure and operations.

Mixed Reality procedures for the maintenance of existing bridges and retaining walls

“…Techniques integration, using semi-automated algorithms and Artificial Intelligence (AI), becomes functional in assessing the state of preservation and structures health monitoring [31]. The literature includes studies and tests on the application of XR, in its broadest sense, to the analysis of infrastructures, from the semi-automated quantification of defects [32]- [34] to support for operators during visual inspection [35]- [38]. Starting from what has been summarized, it is easy to understand the potential of MR techniques for visual inspection also applied to geotechnical works, although there are not many experiments conducted in this area [39], [40].…”