Ted Zoli, national chief bridge engineer with HNTB, compares bridge inspections to taking his kids to the doctor. “Every few years you take another set of pictures of the bridge, and ultimately you can pattern it. You pay attention in a deeper way to responses, and have a record.” But like parents who don’t want to send kids to the doctor at the first sign of a sniffle, once managers understand the characteristics of a bridge and its behavior, they don’t need to do constant in-depth reinspections. They are constantly looking for ways to make better decisions with the data they already have. “We spend a lot of money inspecting bridges,” says Zoli. “The question becomes whether there is a more technologically efficient way to do it.”

Drones are part of the answer. On Dec. 5, Intel announced its collaboration with the Minnesota Dept. of Transportation and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet applying Intel’s advanced commercial drone solutions—including preflight planning software, the Falcon 8+ drone and postprocessing data management—to inspect complex bridge infrastructure. Intel’s software is used to design the flight plan and image capture locations. That mission can be duplicated year after year for subsequent missions, giving inspectors an “apples-to-apples” comparison of the bridge’s changing quality and potential deterioration, says the company announcement. The drone can capture detailed aerial data for 3D reconstruction, down to millimeter accuracy for ground sample distance.