The University of Cambridge and Trimble, a company that provides technology for the construction industry, have begun a project to investigate how Microsoft HoloLens could be used to inspect bridges.
Engineers at the university’s Construction Information Technology (CIT) Laboratory have started trialling the use of HoloLens to investigate whether construction inspectors could use it to spot potentially dangerous cracks in bridges without having to physically visit the site.
Digital cameras will be used to take pictures of a structure, which will then be uploaded to Microsoft’s Azure public cloud. The photographs will be stitched together to provide a detailed image of the bridge being inspected.
Safety experts can then use HoloLens to zoom in and out of the bridge, rotate and “walk” around it from anywhere in the world.
