A researcher at Missouri S&T has developed a robotic system to make bridge inspections sooner, extra complete and safer. Dr. Genda Chen’s invention, referred to as the Bridge Inspection Robot Deployment System, or BIRDS, was awarded the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2025 Charles Pankow Award for Innovation.
“Data from the U.S. National Bridge Inventory shows that over 600,000 bridges in our nation cross roadways and rivers, and over 40% of those bridges are over 50 years old — making regular and thorough inspections crucial,” says Chen, S&T’s Robert W. Abbett Distinguished Chair in Civil Engineering and director of the Center for Intelligent Infrastructure and the INSPIRE University Transportation Center.
“Up until now, bridge inspections have been a visual process conducted manually by human inspectors, and this has been cumbersome, expensive and with safety risks,” he says. “But BIRDS will revolutionize bridge inspections, and it is humbling to me for ASCE to recognize this with the Charles Pankow Award for Innovation.”
According to the ASCE website, the Pankow Award “recognizes the contributions of organizations working collaboratively to advance the design and construction industry by introducing innovation into practice.” Chen accepted the consideration through the 2025 ASCE Convention earlier this month in Seattle.
Chen is the principal investigator for BIRDS, which incorporates three main elements: a hybrid unmanned aerial car (UAV) that flies and can connect to and crawl on bridge girders to seize inspection information with infrared cameras and lidar; a second UAV that carries and deploys a small bicycle-like crawler to examine metal elements with a microscope or crack probe; and a 3rd UAV geared up with a manipulator to carry out upkeep duties and defect testing on concrete.
“Federal standards require regular bridge inspections, which can be a challenge due to the sheer number of bridges and their difficulty to access,” Chen says. “The inspection data we can retrieve from BIRDS will help tremendously with these issues, ensuring that structures are safe and well-maintained and ultimately lowering their life-cycle costs.”
Chen says the subsequent steps for the BIRDS challenge, which started in 2019 and has acquired over $1 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s University Transportation Centers Program and matching sources, shall be to proceed testing potential areas for enchancment with the expertise and working with companies and firms to pursue its widescale adoption.
Chen’s collaborators on the challenge embody: Donn Digamon, state bridge engineer for the Georgia Department of Transportation; Dr. Bryan Hartnagel, state bridge engineer for the Missouri Department of Transportation; Dr. Hung La, assistant professor of laptop science and engineering on the University of Nevada, Reno; Michael Premo assistant chief buildings engineer for the Nevada Department of Transportation; and Dr. Yang Wang, professor of civil engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.
For extra details about Missouri S&T’s civil engineering applications and analysis, go to care.mst.edu.
About Missouri S&T
Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused analysis college of over 7,000 college students situated in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T provides over 100 levels in 40 areas of research and is among the many nation’s high public universities for wage influence, in line with the Wall Street Journal. For extra details about Missouri S&T, go to www.mst.edu.