Drone-based inspections provide an efficient and flexible approach to assessing aging infrastructures while prioritizing safety. Here, we present a pioneering framework that employs drone cameras for high-precision displacement measurement and achieves sub-millimeter accuracy, meeting the requirements for on-site inspections. Inspired by the principles of human auditory equilibrium, we have developed an effective scheme using a group of strategical reference markers on the bridge girders to measure structural displacements in the bridge. Our approach integrates the phase-based sampling moiré technique with four degrees-of-freedom geometric modeling to accurately delineate the desired bridge displacements from camera motion-induced displacements. The proposed scheme demonstrates favorable precision with accuracy reaching up to 1/100th of a pixel. Real-world validations further confirmed the reliability and efficiency of this technique, making it a practical tool for bridge displacement measurement. Beyond its current applications, this methodology holds promise as a foundational element in shaping the landscape of future autonomous infrastructure inspection systems.

Recently, a rapid and accurate single-shot phase measurement technique called the sampling moiré method has been developed for small-displacement distribution measurements. In this study, the theoretical phase error of the sampling moiré method caused by linear intensity interpolation in the case of a mismatch between the sampling pitch and the original grating pitch is analyzed. The periodic phase error is proportional to the square of the spatial angular frequency of the moiré fringe. Moreover, an effective phase compensation methodology is developed to reduce the periodic phase error. Single-shot phase analysis can perform accurately even when the sampling pitch is not matched to the original grating pitch exactly. The primary simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed phase compensation methodology.

Aimed at the low accuracy problem of shear strain measurement in Moiré methods, a two-dimensional (2D) Moiré phase analysis method is proposed for full-field deformation measurement with high accuracy. A grid image is first processed by the spatial phase-shifting sampling Moiré technique to get the Moiré phases in two directions, which are then conjointly analyzed for measuring 2D displacement and strain distributions. The strain especially the shear strain measurement accuracy is remarkably improved, and dynamic deformation is measurable from automatic batch processing of single-shot grid images. As an application, the 2D microscale strain distributions of a titanium alloy were measured, and the crack occurrence location was successfully predicted from strain concentration.

Phase-measuring profilometry is an accurate and effective technique for performing three-dimensional (3D) shape and deformation measurements of diffuse objects by fringe projection. However, phase analysis cannot be performed in underexposed or overexposed areas of the detector when an object with wide reflectance is measured. A novel intensity range extension method using a digital micromirror device (DMD) camera is proposed. In the optics of the DMD camera, each pixel of the CCD corresponds exactly to each mirror of the DMD. The phase-shifted fringe patterns with high contrast can be easily captured by programming an inverse intensity pattern that depends on the reflectance of the object. Our method can provide a wider intensity range and higher accuracy for 3D shape measurement than other conventional methods in both underexposed and overexposed areas. The measurements of a replica of a metallic art object and a flat plane are analyzed experimentally to verify the effectiveness of our method. In the experiment, the percentage of invalid points due to underexposure and overexposure can be reduced from 20% to 1%.