Augmented Reality-Based Smart Structural Health Monitoring System With Accurate 3D Model Alignment

TL;DR

This paper introduces an augmented reality-based structural health monitoring system that accurately aligns 3D models with real structures, enabling remote collaboration and flexible damage visualization for improved infrastructure inspections.

Contribution

It presents a novel AR framework integrating BIM and automatic 3D model alignment using Vuforia, enhancing damage detection and remote inspection capabilities.

Findings

Successful 3D model alignment with real structures demonstrated

Effective remote collaboration validated under 4G and 5G networks

Flexible manipulation of damage points improves inspection accuracy

Abstract

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) has become increasingly critical due to the rapid deterioration of civil infrastructure. Traditional methods involving heavy equipment are costly and time-consuming. Recent SHM approaches use advanced non-contact sensors, IoT, and Augmented Reality (AR) glasses for faster inspections and immersive experiences during inspections. However, current methods lack quantitative damage data, remote collaboration support, and accurate 3D model alignment with the real structure. Recognizing these current challenges, this paper proposes an AR-based system that integrates Building Information Modelling (BIM) visualization and follows a flexible manipulation approach of 3D holograms to improve structural condition assessments. The proposed framework utilizes the Vuforia software development toolkit to enable the automatic alignment of 3D models to the real structure, ensuring successful model alignment to assist users in accurately visualizing damage locations. The framework also enables flexible manipulation of damage locations, making it easier for users to identify multiple damage points in the 3D models. The system is validated through lab-scale and full-scale bridge use cases, with data transfer performance analyzed under 4G and 5G conditions for remote collaboration. This study demonstrates that the proposed AR-based SHM framework successfully aligns 3D models with real structures, allowing users to manually adjust models and damage locations. The experimental results confirm its feasibility for remote collaborative inspections, highlighting significant improvements with 5G networks. Nevertheless, performance under 4G remains acceptable, ensuring reliability even without 5G coverage.