Cost-Effective Vision-Based System For Monitoring Dynamic Response of Civil Engineering Structures

STRUCTURAL CONTROL AND HEALTH MONITORING
Struct. Control Health Monit. 2010; 17:918936

Published online 23 September 2009 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/stc.360
Cost-effective vision-based system for monitoring dynamic

response of civil engineering structures
Yoshio Fukuda,y,z, Maria Q. Fengy and Masanobu Shinozukaz
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, U.S.A.
SUMMARY
This study develops a cost-effective vision-based displacement measurement system for real-time
monitoring of dynamic responses of large-size civil engineering structures such as bridges and buildings.
The system simply consists of a low-cost digital camcorder and a notebook computer equipped with digital
image-processing software developed in this study. A target panel with predesigned marks is attached to a
structure, whose movement is captured by the digital camcorder placed at a xed point away from the
measurement point. The captured images are streamed to the notebook computer and processed by the
software to compute displacement in real time. The efcacy of the system in measuring dynamic responses
was demonstrated through laboratory tests, seismic shaking table tests on a steel building frame, and a eld
experiment on a bridge. In order to simultaneously measure displacements of multiple points, this study
further developed a time synchronization system, in which TCP/IP protocol is employed for
communications. The effectiveness of the time synchronization system was also experimentally veried.
The vision-based system developed in this study is simple, cost-effective, easy to install, and capable of realtime measurement of dynamic responses, making the system ideal for monitoring civil engineering
structures. Copyright r 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
KEY WORDS:
vision-based system; image processing; digital camcorder; dynamic response; displacement

measurement; time synchronization
1. INTRODUCTION
Recent collapse of the highway bridge on I-35 W in Minnesota highlighted the urgent needs for
inspecting structural health of the nations aging civil infrastructures. Civil engineering
*Correspondence to: Yoshio Fukuda, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California,
Irvine, Irvine, CA 92697, U.S.A.
E-mail: fukuday@uci.edu
z
Post-doctoral Scholar.
y
Professor.
z
Distinguished Professor.
Contract/grant sponsor: NSF CMS; contract/grant number: 0510507

Contract/grant sponsor: MCEER/NSF EEC; contract/grant number: 9701471
Copyright r 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Received 11 December 2008

Revised 7 August 2009
Accepted 11 August 2009
COST-EFFECTIVE VISION-BASED SYSTEM
919
structures including bridges and buildings are exposed to various external loads such as trafc,
earthquakes, and gust during their lifetime. Monitoring structural displacement under such
dynamic loads plays an important role in assessing the on-going structural health and
preventing catastrophic structural failure. Conventionally, contact-type sensors such as linear
variable differential transformers (LVDTs) or dial gauges are employed for measuring structural
displacements. However, such a sensor measures a relative displacement and thus needs to be
installed between the measurement point on the structure and a stationary platform. Usually for
a large-scale civil engineering structure, such as a bridge spanning a wide river, a stationary
platform is difcult to set up. Moreover, these sensors are usually wired to a data acquisition
(including power supply) box and wiring can be cumbersome and costly for monitoring a large
structure. On the other hand, accelerometers, which do not require a stationary platform, can be
used to measure displacements through double integration of acceleration [1,2], but numerical
errors are of concern. The emerging Laser Doppler vibrometers and global positioning systems
(GPS) offer potential advantages associated with their noncontract nature [38], but the high
cost of these systems prevents their wide applications in monitoring civil engineering structures.
In order to cope with these problems, various vision-based displacement measurement
systems have been developed. With rapid revolution of computer technology and price plummet
of commercially available computers and camcorders, the vision-based systems are becoming a
cost-effective alternative to the conventional displacement sensors. Stephen et al. successfully
utilized a visual tracking system to measure the very low frequency movement of the Humber
Bridge in the UK [9]. Transputer-based parallel processing techniques were employed to track
the motion of multiple, independent objects in real time. For object tracking, templates of the
user-selected object features were extracted from the initial frame and a template matching
operation using the minimum least squares error scheme was applied repeatedly. Olaszek
developed a method for investigating dynamic characteristics of bridges based on the
photogram-metric principle using an additional reference system [10]. The reference point
concurrently measured with a target point was used to exclude the effect of translational
movement at the image-capturing camera. However, a specially manufactured optical device
was needed to combine with the image-capturing device in order to concurrently capture the
movement of two distant points (reference and target points). Whabeh et al. developed a highdelity video camera with a resolution of 520 lines and capability of 450 digital zoom, and the
targets consisted of black steel sheets 28 inches high by 32 inches wide, on which two highresolution red lights (LED) were mounted to measure displacement of the Vincent Thomas
Bridge located in Sam Pedro, California [11]. Sophisticated signal processing techniques,
including optical data reduction and a nonlinear Gaussian regression curve t, were applied to
determine the center of the high-intensity red spot. Due to the large amount of computation, the
optical data were processed in an off-line manner.
The existing vision-based displacement measurement methods, as reviewed above, suffer
from some common problems. First, the cost of the entire system tends to be expensive, because
high-performance camcorders and computers are required to perform high-speed image
processing. Second, these systems can measure displacements only at a single location. These
problems become considerable obstacles to their applications in real-life structures. In the elds
of the CG animation and man-machine interface, the motion-capture technology has been
introduced to measure human body movement by attaching multiple markers on it. With this
technology, which is also based on the image-processing technique, three-dimensional positions
of the multiple markers attached on a target object can be measured simultaneously with

DOI: 10.1002/stc
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Y. FUKUDA, M. Q. FENG AND M. SHINOZUKA
multiple camcorders. However, the camcorders, which track the markers, should be xed on the
places surrounding the target object, and thus it is difcult to measure a large-size civil
engineering structure.
To overcome these problems, a low-cost high-performance vision-based displacement
measurement system for monitoring civil engineering structures has been developed by the
authors [12]. The use of a commercial digital camcorder and a computer reduces the total cost of
the whole system. Moreover, the system is capable of measuring displacements of multiple
points, by using a time synchronous measurement method developed in this study. The
communication protocol TCP/IP [13] is used to synchronize the time clock of each computer.
The measured displacement data are transmitted to a specied computer for real-time
processing and recording. The communications can be implemented over the Internet for
remote operation without special modication of the system. The effectiveness of the visionbased system has been evaluated and conrmed through laboratory tests (including a seismic
shaking table test on a steel frame building model) and a eld test using moving vehicles at a
bridge. The proposed time synchronous method has also been experimentally evaluated.
2. SYSTEM CONFIGURATION
Figure 1 shows the system conguration of the vision-based displacement measurement system.
This system is composed of a digital camcorder (Panasonic PV-GS35) with 30 optical
zooming capability and maximum resolution of 740 480 pixels, a telescopic lens with 8
optical zooming capability, a target panel marked with a geometric pattern, and a notebook
computer (Intel Pentium processor 1300 MHz and 768 MB RAM) with image-processing
software. To measure the displacement of a structure, the target panel is attached on a specic
location of the structure and the digital camcorder captures the target panel from a remote
location, which is regarded as a xed reference point. It is noted that the pattern can be directly
marked on the structure without using the panel. The captured images are streamed into the
notebook computer through an IEEE1394 connection, and the image-processing software on
the notebook computer calculates the displacement of the target panel using an imageprocessing technique with premeasured calibration parameters.
The image-processing software developed in this study consists of several modules, as shown
in Figure 2. The digital camcorder controller module controls the parameters of the digital
Figure 1. System conguration of vision-based displacement measurement system.


DOI: 10.1002/stc
921
Figure 2. Process ow of image-processing software.
camcorder such as resolution, contrast, and brightness of the captured images. The continuous
image-capturing module manages streamed images from the camcorder for real-time image
processing. These modules are implemented based on the DirectShow technology (Microsoft
Corporation) so that the software can control the camcorder and capture images effectively with
hardware support. The image-processing algorithm module detects the geometric pattern on the
target panel captured by the digital camcorder. The trigonometric transform and calibration
module then computes the actual displacement from the detected geometric pattern of the target
panel. The entire software is implemented by using C11 language.
3. DIGITAL IMAGE PROCESSING

Figure 3 shows the geometric pattern of the target panel. The target panel is marked with four
white points on the surface with black colored background. The vision-based measurement
system uses the four white points to calculate the displacement of the target panel itself. The
four white points on the target panel has a predetermined position relationship that takes into
consideration of the expected maximum displacement to be measured and of the zooming
capability of the camcorder and the telescopic lens.
Figure 4 shows how to convert the detected white points to displacement. The horizontal and
vertical dimensions, Lx and Ly, are predetermined based on the expected maximum
displacement to be measured and the zooming capability of the camcorder and the telescopic
lens. To recognize the white spots on the target, a threshold for the black and white image is
calculated automatically using Ohtsus method [14], regardless of the intensity of outside light.
Then the direction vectors (x1 y1 T ; x2 y2 T ) corresponding to horizontal and vertical
direction are decided. The trigonometric transformation matrix (T) and scaling factors (SFx,
SFy) are calculated as
"
#1
q
q
X1 X2
T
; SFx Lx = x21 y21 ; SFY LY = x22 y22
1
Y1 Y2
q
q
where X1 Y1 T x1 y1 T = x21 y21 and X2 Y2 T x2 y2 T = x22 y22 . The actual displacement
(dx dy T ) of the target panel is calculated using the number of pixels of the target movement
(x yT ), which is based on the movement of the centroid of the centers of the four white spots,

DOI: 10.1002/stc
922
Figure 3. Geometric pattern of the target panel.
Figure 4. Target panel with geometric pattern and basic calibration.
the transformation matrix, and the scaling factors as

"
#
SFx
0
T
dx dy
T x yT
0
SFy
In order to achieve real-time measurement and visualization, image processing must be carried out
within 1=30 s, as most commercial video camcorders support the frame rate of 30 frames per second.
While capturing image frames, the displacement of the target is calculated using image-processing
techniques that include target recognition, calculation of the number of pixels movement,
computation of the actual displacement using the transformation matrix and scaling factors, and
display and storage of the displacement. The quantity of information to be processed in the realtime manner depends on the number of pixels per frame and the number of frames per second.
In order to save the computational time, this system limits the interested region of a captured
image to four small areas around the four white spots. Four white rectangles described in

DOI: 10.1002/stc
923
Figure 5. Process ow of image processing.
Figure 4 show this interest area to be processed. The image processing is performed within the
conned region. This region of interest (ROI) automatically tracks the newly detected white spot
based on the history of the previously detected location of the white spot on the image. Figure 5
shows the image-processing ow including this tracking function of ROI. As shown in this
gure, the initial ROI (1) is dened manually, and then from the image captured in the next time
instant, new ROI (2) is redened by using the previous location of the white spots. The image
processing is performed only within this conned region. As a result, computation time of the
image processing is reduced drastically. Therefore, even two noise reduction operations are
performed in this process ow, the total time consumption can be suppressed within 1=30 s and
a stable real-time measurement achieved by using a common low-cost personal computer.
4. MULTIPOINT MEASUREMENT WITH TIME SYNCHRONIZATION

The vision-based displacement measurement system composed of a notebook computer, a digital
camcorder, a telescopic lens, and a target panel, is restricted to real-time measurement of displacement
of a single point due to the limited computer capacity for image processing. For structural health
monitoring, however, multi-point measurement is often required. In order to respond to such needs,
this study further developed a time synchronous measurement system that enables measurement of
displacements of multiple points simultaneously using multiple computer and camcorder subsystems.
This system can also be applied to measure three-dimensional motion of a structure using two in-plane
measurement systems, which are timely synchronized, and geometrically correlated.

DOI: 10.1002/stc
924
Figure 6. Vision-based multi-point measurement system.
Figure 6 depicts the conguration of the time synchronous measurement system. The system
simply consists of a wireless LAN access point and multiple vision-based displacement
measurement subsystems controlled by one master computer. These computers are included in
one local area network with the wireless LAN access point. In this network, the computers are
able to communicate with each other using TCP/IP protocol.
Multiple target panels are installed on multiple locations of a structure to be measured. The
movement of each target panel is captured and processed by each subsystem. The measured
displacement data by the subsystem are periodically sent to the master computer with the time
stamp based on the computer of the subsystem. Each 10 s data packet is sent to the master
computer through IEEE802g wireless communications. On the master computer, all the measured
displacement data from the subsystems can be displayed and recorded. Moreover, in order to
synchronize the recorded time among the subsystems, the master computer adjusts the local time
of the subsystems by measuring the time delay of the wireless communications. Figure 7 shows
how to synchronize the time clock of each computer. Basically, the internal clocks in all the slave
computers are adjusted based on the internal clock in the master computer. First, the master
computer sends a dummy time data that has the same data size as the actual time data, to each
slave computers (dashed arrow in the gure). The slave computers simply return the received
dummy time data to the master computer immediately. By measuring the time gap between the
times sending and receiving the dummy time data by the master computer, the time cost to send
the time data to the slave computers is estimated. Next, the master computer sends the time
obtained from its own internal time clock to each slave computers, from which the transmission
lag is obtained, as shown in the solid arrow in the gure. Finally, the slave computers adjust the
internal clock according to the received time data from the master computer.
5. EXPERIMENTS AND RESULTS

In order to evaluate the performance of the vision-based displacement measurement system
developed in this study, several experiments have been performed including a shaking table test,
a seismic shaking table test on a steel building frame model, a time synchronization experiment
and a eld test on a bridge.

DOI: 10.1002/stc
925
Figure 7. Time synchronization.
5.1. Sinusoidal shaking test

Figure 8 shows the experimental setup using an electromagnetic shaking table. A single-point
displacement measurement system was tested that consists of a camcorder, a telescopic lens
(8 and a computer. A target panel is installed on the shaking table. The distance between the
target panel and the lens of the camcorder is 15 m. On the black target panel, four white spots
are placed with a diagonal distance of 10 cm, as shown in the gure. A contact-type
displacement sensor, an LVDT is also installed, in order to compare with the acquired
displacement by the vision-based system. The shaking table is excited by sinusoidal motion from
1 to 8 Hz. Figure 9 compares the time histories of displacements at 1, 4, and 8 Hz, respectively
measured by the noncontact vision-based system and contact-type LVDT.
The solid lines show the experimental result measured by the LVDT, and the dashed lines show
those measured by the vision-based system. As show in this gure, the error between the
displacements measured by the vision-based system and the LVDT is less than 0.2 mm for the 1 Hz
excitation. However, as the excitation frequency of the shaking table increases, the error becomes
larger, as shown in Figure 9(b, c). The displacement measured by the vision-based system is smaller
than the LVDT result. The increase of measurement error for higher-frequency motion is considered
due to the image lag of the white spots caused by the limited shutter speed of the digital camcorder.
In terms of the data acquisition rate, it depends on the frame rate of the employed digital
camcorder to capture the images. The digital camcorder used in this experiment is able to
capture 30 frames per second, and thus the data acquisition (sampling) rate is limited to 30 Hz,
which is apparently insufcient for accurately measuring high-frequency motion. However, the
objective of this study is to develop a displacement measurement system for civil engineering
structures, which are usually large in size and have natural frequencies lower than 45 Hz. From
this shaking table tests, it is conrmed that the vision-based displacement measurement system
has adequate accuracy and sampling rate for monitoring large-scale civil engineering structures.
For measuring higher-frequency motion, a camcorder with a higher shutter speed and higher
sampling rate becomes necessary.

DOI: 10.1002/stc
926
Figure 8. Experimental setup of shaking table test.
Figure 10 shows the increase of errors, which correlates to the distance between the target
panel and the camcorder without telescopic lens. Figure 10(a) shows the measured displacement
of the shaking table, which is exited by sinusoidal motion at 2 Hz in horizontal direction. The
solid line shows the measured displacement by the vision-based system and the dashed line the
measured displacement by the LVDT. The camcorder for vision-based system is xed 25 m
away from the target panel (81 mm 81 mm) and the sinusoidal motion of the target panel was
measured at the different distances. As shown in this gure, the measured displacement at a
distance of 5 m is slightly distorted compared with the result from the 2 m distance. This
deterioration is caused by the lack of pixels of the target panel, which appears on the captured
images. Figure 10(b) shows the root mean square errors (RMSE) between the results measured
by the vision-based system and the LVDT. As shown in this gure, the RMSE increases in
proportion to the distance between the camcorder and the target panel, and inversely with the
maximum measurable range. Therefore, in order to maximize the measurement accuracy of
the vision-based system, it is important to estimate the proper maximum displacement range of
the target point to be measured, and t the range to the whole eld angle of the camcorder.
Using the vision-based system, which includes the camcorder with 10 optical zooming
capability, the 8 telescopic lens and the 81 mm 81 mm target panel, it was possible to
capture the target panel that placed at a distance of 45 m away from the camcorder with 0.5 m
measureable displacement.
5.2. Time synchronization test
To evaluate the accuracy of the time synchronization, an experiment using three computers
including a master computer and two subsystems was performed. Figure 11 shows the

DOI: 10.1002/stc
927
Figure 9. Measured displacement time histories of shaking table: (a) 1 Hz; (b) 4 Hz; and 8Hz.
experimental setup. Basically, the experimental condition is the same as the shaking table test
above, but the two subsystems are aiming at one target panel. And these subsystems and the
master computer are connected wirelessly with each other using wireless LAN access point
placed 10 m away from all the computers. The time synchronization software developed in this

DOI: 10.1002/stc
928
Figure 10. Measurement error versus distance: (a) deterioration of measured sinusoidal motion and
(b) increase of error.
study is also installed on all the computers. The two slave computers in the subsystems are
synchronized based on the internal time clock of the master computer. To verify the accuracy of
the slave computers internal time clocks, each of the slave computers generates a voltage signal
through its serial port every second based on its internal time clock. The voltage signals
generated by the two slave computers are monitored by one oscilloscope, which is connected to
the serial ports. By referring the waveforms obtained by the oscilloscope, the time lag between
the internal clocks of the two slave computers can be evaluated. Figure 12 shows the measured
sinusoidal motion at 1 Hz with both subsystems and the measured time lag between the two

DOI: 10.1002/stc
929
Figure 11. Experimental setup for time synchronization test.
Figure 12. Experimental result of time synchronization: (a) measured displacement of one target panel
using two vision-based systems after time synchronization (1 Hz sinusoidal motion) and (b) measured time
lag between two vision-based system.
subsystems. The test was performed 5 times, and for each test, 6 times measured every 60 s. As
shown in this gure, the mean error of the time delay after the time synchronization was 1.52 ms
and the internal clock times of each slave computers were correctly synchronized by the
developed software.

DOI: 10.1002/stc
930
However, because of the difference in the accuracy of the computers internal time clocks, the
time lag between the two slave computers tends to increase as time goes by as shown in Figure 11
In this experiment, the lag time was increasing 1.43 ms for every 1 min in the mean. In order to
prevent such an increase in the time lag, the time synchronization process must be scheduled and
performed periodically by the software.
5.3. Seismic shaking table test on a building frame
The performance of the vision-based system was further evaluated through seismic shaking
table tests. The vision-based system was used to measure the seismic response of a three-storey
steel frame building model excited by a bi-axial hydraulic seismic shaking table at the University
of California, Irvine. The table size is 100 120 and the maximum horizontal stroke is 71000
while the vertical stroke is 500 . The table is capable of producing 1.0 g horizontal excitation at
1 Hz for a 20 000 lb test specimen. The three-storey steel building frame model was xed on this
table as shown in Figure 13. The overall oor plan dimension of the model is 60 6000 and each
story is 3000 high. Two ground motion records were selectedthe 1995 Grate HanshinAwaji
earthquake and the 2000 Western Tottori earthquake, as they represent distinctively different
frequency contents. Response displacement of the model was measured by the vision-based
displacement sensor with 30 frames per second and an LVDT (P-20A Sensors & Controls
Corporation) with the sampling rate of 125 Hz as a reference sensor. The target panel that has
125 mm between 2 points in a horizontal direction, 100 mm between 2 points in a vertical
direction, and the LVDT were installed on the top front side of the model, and the camcorder
with a telescopic lens (8 ) was placed on 5 m away from the target panel as shown in Figure 14.
Figure 15 shows the seismic response displacements of the building frame, together with their
power spectral densities, measured by the two different sensors under the two different ground
Figure 13. A steel building frame model on a seismic shaking table.


DOI: 10.1002/stc
931
Figure 14. Seismic shaking table test setup.
motions. As shown in Figure 15(a), the displacement time histories measured by the LVDT and the
vision-based system are in excellent agreement with each other under both of the ground motions.
The RMSE values between these two displacement time histories measured by the LVDT and the
vision-based system were 0.671 mm under the Grate HanshinAwaji earthquake, and 0.660 mm
under the Western Tottori Earthquake, respectively. As shown in the power spectral densities in
Figure 15(b), the frequency domain responses are also in excellent agreement with each other. The
RMSE values between these two frequency domain responses are 0.355 mm2/Hz under the Grate
HanshinAwaji earthquake simulation, and 0.188 mm2/Hz under the excitation by the Western
Tottori earthquake simulation, respectively. The shaking table test results demonstrate the capability
of the vision-based system to measure structural vibration caused by the actual earthquakes.
5.4. Field test on a bridge
A eld experiment was performed to measure displacement of the Samseung Bridge, a singlespan highway bridge consisting of ve steel plate girders, as shown in Figure 16. This is one of
the three bridges built by the Korea highway corporation on a 7.7 km test road (next to an
ordinary two-lane expressway along the Joongbu Inland Expressway in Korea) to verify and
enhance the pavement design guides based on the measured data under real trafc and
environmental conditions. The span length of the bridge is 40 m. Moving vehicle test was
performed using three dump trucks with the load of, respectively, 15, 30, and 40 ton. Response
displacement of the bridge to vehicle running at the speed of 3 and 50 km/h were measured at the
center of the span in the vertical direction by three different sensors: a contact-type wired
displacement transducer with the sampling rate of 1000 Hz (the OU displacement transducer,
Tokyo Sokki Kenkyujo CO. Ltd.), a noncontact-type laser vibrometer with the sampling rate of
100 Hz (OFV-505 Standard Optic Sensor Head and OFV-5000 Modular Controller, Polytec,
Inc.), and a vision-based system with 30 frames per second. The experimental setup is shown in
Figure 16. The contact-type displacement LVDT transducer was installed on the ground (as a
reference point) and connected to the measurement point on the bridge by a string. The
noncontact-type laser vibrometer was also installed on the ground below the bridge aiming the

DOI: 10.1002/stc
932
Figure 15. Experimental result of seismic shaking table test: (a) measured displacement by vision-based
system and (b) power spectral distribution.
measurement point, and a reector was installed on the measurement point to reect the emitted
laser. The camera with a telescopic lens was placed at 20 m apart from the target, and captured
an image of 3 cm height with 480 pixels in vertical direction (0.00625 mm/pixel). The target panel
was installed on the measurement point. It is noted that the camcorder and the target panel are
placed in different heights due to the limited space for placing the camcorder in the actual eld.
Assuming the displacement of the target panel varies only in the vertical direction, a
compensation factor can be easily calculated. In this eld experiment, the compensation factor
was precalculated using an actual vertical displacement of the target panel and the
corresponding displacement in the captured image.

DOI: 10.1002/stc
933
Figure 16. Field test on a steel girder bridge.
Figure 17 compares the displacement time histories measured by these three different types of
sensors under the moving vehicles of different speeds. In case of the moving speed of 3 km/h, the
maximum vertical displacements of the bridge mid-span were approximately 1.0, 2.0, and 2.5 mm
under the 15, 30, and 40 ton vehicles, respectively. Among the three measurement systems, the
conventional contact-type displacement transducer showed the highest measurement noise. Under
the low-speed vehicles as shown in Figure 17(a), the displacement measured by the vision-based
system was very close to those from the laser vibrometer. Under the high-speed (50 km/h) vehicles as
shown in Figure 17(b), the displacements measured by the vision-based system were approximately
10% lower than those measured by the laser vibrometer. This is due to the fact that the high-speed
vehicle induced vibration of the bridge at its rst natural frequency (which was found to be 4.2 Hz).
In order to accurately trace such a high-frequency dynamic motion, a camcorder with a frame rate
higher than 30 frames per second is necessary. This would obviously increase the cost of the visionbased system. Nevertheless, this eld test demonstrates that the vision-based displacement
measurement system can measure dynamic response of the bridge with a reasonable accuracy (less
than 10%). Considering that most of the large-size civil engineering structures have their natural
frequencies lower than 45 Hz, the low-cost vision-based system developed in this study at its current
state is appropriate for monitoring dynamic displacement of large-size civil engineering structures.
6. CONCLUSION
In this study, a vision-based displacement measurement system including a high-efciency
digital image-processing algorithm was developed using a low-cost digital camcorder and a PC.

DOI: 10.1002/stc
934
Figure 17. Experimental result of eld test on a steel girder bridge: (a) v=3 km/h and (b) v=50 km/h.

DOI: 10.1002/stc
935
This system is capable of real-time measurement of dynamic response of large-size civil

engineering structures with low natural frequencies. Moreover, a time synchronization system
was developed, which enables time-synchronized measurement of multiple points using several
vision-based subsystems. The features of the vision-based displacement measurement system, as
summarized below, offer signicant advantages over the currently available displacement
sensors for monitoring civil engineering structures.

Noncontact, remote measurement;

Real-time measurement due to high-efciency image processing;
Low-cost system conguration;
Easy installation and operation;
Multipoint measurement with time synchronization using TCP/IP protocol;
Internet-based data transfer by using TCP/IP protocol.
The efcacy of the vision-based system was demonstrated through the sinusoidal shaking
test, the seismic shaking table test on a building frame model, and the eld test on a bridge. The
sinusoidal shaking test veried the capability of the system for measuring sinusoidal motions up
to 8 Hz in real time with a reasonable accuracy (in comparison with the conventional LVDT
transducer). In the seismic shaking table test, two earthquake ground motion records, the 1995
Grate HanshinAwaji earthquake and the 2000 Western Tottori earthquake, which represent
different frequency contents, were selected. The response displacement of the building model
measured by the vision-based system and its power spectral distribution demonstrated an
excellent agreement with the results measured by the LVDT. In the eld test on a highway
bridge, the bridge dynamic responses to moving vehicles of different weights and moving speeds
were successfully measured. By comparing the results from other types of displacement
transducers, it was found that the vision-based measurement system has sufcient speed for realtime measurement of dynamic response of the bridge with a reasonably high accuracy. The
accuracy for measuring high-frequency motion can be further improved by employing a digital
camcorder with a higher frame rate.
The effectiveness of the time synchronization system developed in this study was also
experimentally veried. The system embeds an algorithm that automatically and periodically
performs synchronization through TCP/IP communication to maintain the time lag between
internal clocks of multiple computers to a range o5 ms. The multipoint measurement system
based on the time synchronization will be experimentally evaluated in the future.
For further improvement of the vision-based displacement measurement system to aim eld
application in structural health monitoring, the following issues need to be considered:
(1)
(2)
(3)
Additional PCs and camcorders are needed to measure additional target points;
The telescopic lens needs to have high magnifying power to capture the target panel, if
the target structure is far away;
Visual obstacles between the installed target panel and camcorder that disturb the image
processing such as change of light intensity by time passage and change of weather
conditions, should be considered.
Issues (1) and (2) increase the hardware cost in the vision-based system. They can be
alleviated by using a single camcorder and a single PC for multiple points located nearby. By
means of increasing the resolution of the camcorder, or employing a half mirror, which enables

DOI: 10.1002/stc
936
image capturing of multi location using single camcorder, the total cost of the vision-based
system for multi-point measurement will be reduced. To cope with issue (3), improvement of the
image-processing technique is needed. Gain controlling and pattern matching are potential
techniques to overcome the visual obstacles such as change of the daylight and weather
condition. These will be the topics of a future study.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research is partially supported by NSF under grant CMS-0510507 and MCEER/NSF under grant
EEC 9701471. The authors appreciate the assistance of Dr J. J. Lee of Korean Advanced Institute for
Science and Technology in the bridge eld experiment
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DOI: 10.1002/stc

Cost-Effective Vision-Based System For Monitoring Dynamic Response of Civil Engineering Structures

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Cost-Effective Vision-Based System For Monitoring Dynamic Response of Civil Engineering Structures

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STRUCTURAL CONTROL AND HEALTH MONITORING

Struct. Control Health Monit. 2010; 17:918936