Within the first week of october 2021 another utilization of the VisionMetrics SCT technology has been implemented within a high demanding application for structural monitoring at the hydroelectric power tunnel Tumpen – Habichen in Oetztal-valley, Austria.
Deploying VisionMetric’s machine vision based precision sensing module enables the possibility to achieve a level of dimensional accuracy down to some tenth of micrometers within a measurement range of 35 meters, making the technology perfectly suited for high demanding structural monitoring applications.
Continuous structural monitoring of construction sites like tunnel structures, bridges and railway line basements – commonly known as convergence metering – is continuously gaining importance and is posing a great and non-trivial challenge for metrology engineers. Especially when sub-millimeter or even tenth-of-micrometer accuracy and a high degree of automation is needed, the availability of applicable measurement systems is very limited.
VisionMetric‘s SCT technology has been eliminating this gap and provides a unique solution for fully-automated, high accuracy and easy to setup structural monitoring at a very competitive level of cost, based on years of research and developement in high accuracy dimensional metrology.
Leveraging the big advantage of camera-based metrology enables the simultaneous usage of hundreds of measurement points sampled and processed in real time.
Automated precision at a rugged level
The particular use-case presented at the hydroelectric power tunnel Tumpen-Habichen required a mid-precision monitoring of radial deformation during high-pressure preloading injection. The requested precision level was within the range of 100-200 micrometers at a maximum distance of 30 meters and the measurement needed to take place during an ongoing manual injection and grinding process which eventually leads to a disturbed field of view and a non-neglibile optical pollution of the underdround-air.
The VisionMetrics SCT technology relies on years of research and development in camera-based metrology systems and benefits from deeply researched calibration and compensation techniques as well as research in micromechanical behaviour for model-based compensation strategies and artificial intelligence based image processing. Especially when deploying measurement systems within the field of mining and tunnelling, there is a special need for ruggedness against various environmental influencing factors. Hereby, opposing engineering aspects like achieving a high accuracy while maintaining a high degree of protection and resisting to shock-impacts, vibration and pollution are the most challenging design aspects to solve while iterating through the engineering cycles of the hardware, software and the artificial intelligence of the system.
Cloud-connected tunnelling equipment
Every metrology system developed by VisionMetrics and used within mining and tunnelling is equipped with the unique TunnelLink technology, which enables a direct connection to the VisionMetrics-SecureCloud without the need of an on-site internet connection in the tunnel/mine and with little effort for setup. Utilizing a dedicated long-range and reliable wireless connection for bridging the last miles into the tunnel – mostly inaccessible for cellular connection – gives real-time control of the measurement setup and data to the operator’s office.
Combining any digital tunnelling equipment with VisionMetrics TunnelLink enables a big potential for remote control, data-analization and unlocks Over-the-air update features to the most remote places. More details on the TunnelLink technology will be published soon.
Bringing this technologies together makes the VisionMetrics SCT devices become a high performing and reliable toolchain for remote, automated and non-intrusive structural monitoring for a wide range of applications.
This yields to an industry-leading solution for precise structural monitoring at a very competitive level of cost. Achieving real-time micrometer-accuracy, automated and cloud-analyzed measurement of many simultaneous surveyed properties has gotten easy and affordable by placing a VisionMetrics SCT device on the site to be monitored.
VisionMetrics is a solutions provider in the field of AI-based industrial metrology and real-time systems. Our agile development processes enable a quick adaptation or extension of the existing toolchains to create tailored solutions to any customer’s specific needs.