Unmanned aerial vehicle technology use in visual road inspection at Ft005, Johor Bahru-Melaka

Abstract

Visual road inspection is one of the key phases of road maintenance to examine and describe the condition of road infrastructure. The local authority still uses the conventional road inspection method. However, this method has its drawbacks. In this study, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) was used to help in the road infrastructure information search and to determine the severity level of the road in visual road inspection. The objectives of this study are: to capture road images at study locations using UAV technology, to produce data for pavement distress using the UAV photogrammetry method, and to analyse the level of pavement distress using the Pavement Condition Index (PCI) method. Results from this study showed that UAVs are suitable for aerial mapping with the condition that a professional operator operates it during data acquisition and the use of UAVs as a verification medium is more efficient than the conventional method because it measures every end and vertex of the road using a digitising method, whereas the conventional method measures from vertex to the vertex of the road using a theodolite. A total of 206 locations with 11 different types of pavement distress have been identified by the PCI results using this technology. Overall, the pavement distress of the road from Sections 1 to 4 is at a serious level and necessitates reconstruction.