This report develops non-contact optical methods for measuring concrete small-sized cracks (less than 3 mm) for remote diagnostics of hard-to-reach building surfaces using unmanned aerial vehicles. The drone's high-resolution digital camera captures remote close-up photography of the concrete surface under high light intensity levels. A special contact landing module made it possible to record the distance between the camera and the concrete surface being photographed. This made it possible to achieve laboratory shooting conditions and increased the accuracy of measurements. The digital image of the crack converted in a data matrix, each element of which contains information about the level of reflected light from the concrete surface and the crack. Using the formulas obtained by us earlier, with the help of computer processing of the image, the morphology of the crack in real geometrical dimensions can be calculated. Using special tools computer programs, the crack’s geometrical parameters can be measured maximal accurately as possible. The measurement error of length and width is 0.026 mm. The proposed remote optical method for non-contact detection of cracks in concrete when photographing with a drone from a close distance allows achieving the standard measurement error of depth around 1.52 mm. This optical method can be useful for diagnosing the state of the initial stages of destruction of high- rise concrete buildings, huge dams and bridges under normal weather conditions.
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