New GPR System Integration with Augmented Reality Based Positioning

Abstract

The development of modern cities heavily relies on the availability and quality of underground utilities that provide drinking water, sewage, electric power, and telecommunication services to sustain its growing population. However, the information of localization and condition of subterranean infrastructures is generally not readily available, especially in areas with congested pipes, which impacts urban development, as poorly documented pipes may be hit during construction, affecting services and causing costly delays. Furthermore, aging components are prone to failure and may lead to resources waste or the interruption of services. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a promising remote sensing technique that has been recently used for mapping and assessment of underground infrastructure. However, current commercial GPR survey systems are designed with wheel-encoders or GPS for positioning. Wheel-encoder based GPR surveys are restrained to linear-route only, preventing the use of GPR for accurate localization of city wide underground infrastructure inspection. While GPS signal is degraded in urban canyons and unavailable in city tunnels. In this work, we present a new GPR system integration with augmented reality (AR) based positioning that can overcome the limitations of current GPR systems to enable arbitrary-route scanning with a high fidelity. It has the potential for automation of GPR survey and integration with AR smartphone applications that could be used for better planning in urban development.