A wide variety of media can be used in learning, including distance learning, such as print, lectures, conference sections, tutors, pictures, video, sound, and computers. Any one instance of distance learning will make choices among these media, perhaps using several.

Multimedia in Learning

What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy

The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is growing rapidly across many civil application domains, including real-time monitoring, providing wireless coverage, remote sensing, search and rescue, delivery of goods, security and surveillance, precision agriculture, and civil infrastructure inspection. Smart UAVs are the next big revolution in the UAV technology promising to provide new opportunities in different applications, especially in civil infrastructure in terms of reduced risks and lower cost. Civil infrastructure is expected to dominate more than $45 Billion market value of UAV usage. In this paper, we present UAV civil applications and their challenges. We also discuss the current research trends and provide future insights for potential UAV uses. Furthermore, we present the key challenges for UAV civil applications, including charging challenges, collision avoidance and swarming challenges, and networking and security-related challenges. Based on our review of the recent literature, we discuss open research challenges and draw high-level insights on how these challenges might be approached.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles: A Survey on Civil Applications and Key Research Challenges

Comparison of deep convolutional neural networks and edge detectors for image-based crack detection in concrete

Over the past few years, the application of camera-equipped Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) for visually monitoring construction and operation of buildings, bridges, and other types of civil infrastructure systems has exponentially grown. These platforms can frequently survey construction sites, monitor work-in-progress, create documents for safety, and inspect existing structures, particularly for hard-to-reach areas. The purpose of this paper is to provide a concise review of the most recent methods that streamline collection, analysis, visualization, and communication of the visual data captured from these platforms, with and without using Building Information Models (BIM) as a priori information. Specifically, the most relevant works from Civil Engineering, Computer Vision, and Robotics communities are presented and compared in terms of their potential to lead to automatic construction monitoring and civil infrastructure condition assessment.

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Visual monitoring of civil infrastructure systems via camera-equipped Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): a review of related works

Civil engineers always face the challenge of uncertainty in planning, building, and maintaining infrastructure. These works rely heavily on a variety of surveying and monitoring techniques. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are an effective approach to obtain information from an additional view, and potentially bring significant benefits to civil engineering. This paper gives an overview of the state of UAV developments and their possible applications in civil engineering. The paper begins with an introduction to
UAV hardware, software, and control methodologies. It also reviews the latest developments in technologies
related to UAVs, such as control theories, navigation methods, and image processing. Finally, the paper
concludes with a summary of the potential applications of UAV to seismic risk assessment, transportation,
disaster response, construction management, surveying and mapping, and flood monitoring and assessment.

A review of rotorcraft Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) developments and applications in civil engineering

Taiwan experiences typhoons on a yearly basis, and the accompanying heavy rain often causes flooding and damage. Local decision makers invest heavily in flood prevention measures and thus need to allocate resources wisely to minimize the destruction caused. To educate future decision makers, we developed a flood game to encourage players' active learning by exploration. The game design is based on "Shikakeology" and "game-initiated learning" methods. Through the design of the game, a change in behavior is initiated by allowing players to face real-world flooding problems and discuss problems related to flood disaster management. Following gameplay, the instructors will introduce information useful in solving flood-related problems. From the feedback of review meetings, game-initiated learning was recognized as an educational method with great potential in teaching disaster management. Five public activities have been held, including three high school camps and two exhibitions. Among the students who participated in the high school camps, 92 % of the students thought the game was helpful in teaching disaster prevention strategies. Ninety-six percentage of those that attended the exhibitions said they would like to play the game again, and 98 % of the participants indicated that they would pay more attention to the issues surrounding disaster prevention. This indicates that game-initiated learning is able to stimulate learning for the participants.

Game-based education for disaster prevention

This paper presents an ongoing work on using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) in construction scenarios. Augmented reality (AR), the technologies integrating the real images and virtual rendering scene, will also be integrated to enhance the application of UAV. The high viewpoint and the combination of real and virtual scene provide engineers augmented views to the construction site. They will increase the possibility of discovering the unfound problems. We have designed and prototyped an UAV with features important for the construction management: (1) stabilized image capturer, (2) site level image transmission and (3) telecommunication and viewing interface. The stabilized image capturer includes a 2-axis brushless motor gimbal which can continuous adjust the camera to aim a specific direction. The image transmission was carried out by using radio frequency transmitters which specifically optimized by considering the size of the construction site. The interface includes a multi-rotor UAV that has reliable telemetry control, a display that can render the mixed scene between virtual and real views using AR technology, and a wireless local area network (WLAN) system that provides access to realtime image stream for multiple devices. From preliminary tests, we found the system has the potential for discovering unnoticed detail problems in real construction site, such as vehicle path planning conflicts and structure spatial dilemmas. In the near future, we plan to test the UAV-AR solution in three common construction scenarios: typical building site, bridge inspection, and urban planning.

Augmented Reality and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Assist in Construction Management

This paper provides an innovative approach for conducting bridge inspections by optimizing an unmanned aerial system (UAS) A rotorcraft prototype, a camera gimbal mechanism, and a workflow is developed in this study The rotorcraft is used to carry the camera gimbal for capturing images Since visual inspection is a primary method of evaluating the structural conditions of a bridge, bridge inspectors need to work in dangerous environments such as cliffs and riversides Current methods employ vehicles equipped with massive robot arms developed for lifting workers to the outbound of bridges, which increase the risk associated with an inspection In addition, such methods are time, money, and labour intensive, and can be applied only on large-scale brides due to working space requirements In order to develop a low-cost and more flexible approach, this paper offers an optimized UAS to acquire images of a bridge from underneath, and serve to provide a visual aid for bridge inspectors An on-board camera gimbal mechanism is developed for acquiring stable image data and remote control Furthermore, we designed a workflow for using this system based on our field test The workflow included bridge investigation, path planning, image acquisition, and post processing To verify the proposed approach, we tested our system on the Hsia-kuei Shan Bridge in Wulai, north of Taiwan The results showed that the proposed approach can save costs and be efficient for bridge inspections

Ming-Chang Wen

Papers

A review of rotorcraft Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) developments and applications in civil engineering

Game-based education for disaster prevention

Augmented Reality and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Assist in Construction Management

An Optimized Unmanned Aerial System for Bridge Inspection

Teleyes: A telepresence system based on stereoscopic vision and head motion tracking