A new cooperation project of the Chair of Computing in Engineering is dedicated to the structural inspection in the field of bridge construction with the help of AI. The project is carried out in cooperation with the Federal Highway Research Institute (BASt).

Within the scope of the project, available technologies and our own preliminary work will be combined to provide the most practical support possible for building inspectors. The focus is on visual inspection in the context of DIN 1076. Using the system being developed, visible damage to the structure will be automatically recorded and evaluated in interaction with the user. Various challenges have to be overcome in this process:

• AI methods for damage detection and damage analysis that can be executed on mobile AR systems in real time,
• Interaction concepts with AR systems in an outdoor environment under different operating conditions for the input of supplementary information,
• Accurate location of the mobile AR system to link identified damages and their display during subsequent walk-throughs,
• Improvement of AI procedures by incorporating new evaluation results in the course of building inspections,
• Observation of specifications for information security and data protection in the design and realization of a demonstrator.

The Ruhr-University Bochum will subcontract Hochtief ViCon GmbH for the project in order to combine the existing practical knowledge and experience in structural bridge and civil engineering as well as the implementation of AR/MR technologies with the knowledge of the RUB in the field of artificial intelligence and integration of AR-based interaction concepts.