Towards automatic inspection: Crack recognition based on Quadrotor UAV-taken images

Building inspection searching for superficial defects, such as cracks, is a vital task because such damages cause economic losses or put at risk the integrity of people. For this reason, different ways to reduce the costs and risks through the use of robotic systems that allow make inspections have been studied. Among these robotic systems, we have the unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that allow reaching difficult access places permitting better inspection. In this work, we propose using convolutional neuronal networks for crack recognition from images captured by an UAV. To carry out the training task of the network, a database of cracks in walls was built from images collected from the Internet. The training of the network prompted encouraging results with a 95% accuracy over the training set. Experimental results of crack recognition in images were carried out validating the application of the proposal.