Every day, hundreds if not thousands of people drive over bridges with smartphones in their cars. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discovered that they can use these smartphones to check the health of the bridges. They do this by analyzing the accelerometer data that all smartphones are constantly collecting. They were able to pick out the bridge’s modal frequencies, which are unique to each bridge.
Can your smartphone detect damage to bridges?
Answer: Yes.
(FlickrCC/John Piercy)
As our infrastructure ages, detecting issues before it comes down on our heads, or out from underneath our feet, is becoming increasingly important. But the easiest way to do it is with labor-intensive and time-consuming manual inspections, for now.
Every day, hundreds if not thousands of people drive over bridges with smartphones in their cars. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discovered that they can use these smartphones to check the health of the bridges. They do this by analyzing the accelerometer data that all smartphones are constantly collecting. They were able to pick out the bridge’s modal frequencies, which are unique to each bridge.
This is a lot like taking the bridge’s temperature — if there’s any damage, it will show in the modal frequencies, even before it’s visible to the naked eye. The team envisions smartphones in city and commercial vehicles, such as police cars and delivery trucks, being used to collect this data.
Every day, hundreds if not thousands of people drive over bridges with smartphones in their cars. A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) discovered that they can use these smartphones to check the health of the bridges. They do this by analyzing the accelerometer data that all smartphones are constantly collecting. They were able to pick out the bridge’s modal frequencies, which are unique to each bridge.
