Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

Fugro Roadware is a Canadian company, which has over 40 years of experience as the leading internationalsupplier of roadway data-collection solutions. Fugro Roadware has developed the world's most advancedautomated highway surveying vehicles, called ARAN, for structural and functional inspection of paved roads.In Canada, 60.1% of public road network is unpaved. Unpaved roads, as lifelines of rural areas, are subject tovarious types of damage and distress. Therefore, these roads should be monitored frequently to detect andrepair such damages, assess geometry conditions, and manage infrastructure assets. Although Fugro'stechnology is very efficient for surveying paved roads, data collection using a moving vehicle still remains acostly and troublesome solution for unpaved roads. This suggests the requirement for further research in orderto develop an efficient solution for assessing unpaved roads. Accordingly, Fugro Roadware is interested inevaluating the feasibility of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to replace the terrestrial vehicles used for thispurpose. Therefore, they have contacted Centre de géomatique du Québec (CGQ) to conduct an evaluationstudy. With its long-term expertise in surveying and unmanned aerial mapping, CGQ will organize and conductexperiments to collect the essential data using its UAV equipped with a high-resolution imaging system. CGQwill also develop a photogrammetric methodology to extract the visual information and the 3D measurementsrequired for assessing unpaved roads. The Vision and Surveyor solutions of Fugro Roadware will be used toanalyze the data. Then, CGQ will evaluate the accuracy of the results with respect to the ground-truth data. Asa result, the limitations and advantages of an unmanned aerial photogrammetry system for roadmapping/assessing will be evaluated, and solutions for optimizing the performance of the system will besuggested. In addition, the costs of unmanned aerial surveys of unpaved roads will be estimated. Realizing thisresearch project will allow Fugro Roadware to complete their feasibility study, increase their knowledge ofphotogrammetric mapping, and gain unique expertise in the field of unmanned inspection of unpaved roads.