In the next 30 years, our highway and railway system will face challenges ranging from aging infrastructure and increasing congestion to declining revenues due to reduced fuel tax and increasing service interruption. Cheaper, faster, and safer inspection and preservation tools are needed to maintain our nation’s ground transportation system in a state of good repair.

Currently, bridges and tunnels are visually inspected and manually maintained under traffic control with the aid of heavy lifting equipment.

In the future, with successful development and implementation of robotic platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), these structures will be evaluated and sometimes maintained underneath bridge decks with no access equipment and no traffic control, reducing labor hours, avoiding rental, transportation and mobilization costs of equipment, saving fuel and indirect costs associated with service interruption, alleviating traffic congestion, and promoting work zone safety.