Nowadays bridges are not inspected visually but by teams of engineers who dangle beneath the bridge on cables or look up at the bridge from an elevated work platform because it has a few problems associated with it like it is a slow, dangerous, expensive process and even the most experienced engineers can overlook cracks in the structure or other critical deficiencies. the process comes with a lot of loopholes. A new detection system has been developed by Babak Moaveni, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tufts School of Engineering, smart sensors which are attached permanently to bridge beams and joints, can continuously record vibrations and process the recorded signal. Changes in the vibration response can signify damage, he says. A wireless system that would use autonomous flying robots (quad-copters) to hover near the sensors and collect data while taking visual images of bridge conditions, is also being developed. The drone-like robots would transmit data to a central collection point for analysis by Moaveni in collaboration with Tufts Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Usman Khan. Read more at:
http://www.informationweek.in/informationweek/news-analysis/297556/iot-prevent-bridges-collapsing