Project Category: Electrical
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About our project
Our sponsor, Sawback Technologies Inc., is developing hardware and software for a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) solution to identify and map pipelines. In addition to this more traditional GPR use-case, the sponsor wanted to explore the possibility of using the system for infrastructure inspection. Our project aimed to take the sponsor’s first antenna prototype and provide a proof-of-concept system to identify rebar in concrete.
The three main objectives of the project were to:
- Develop a self-contained power system to power the antenna and the accompanying FPGA board. This needed to be portable so that the GPR system can be used without being attached to an external power supply and is therefore more maneuverable.
- Develop a signal processing algorithm to process the data collected with the GPR hardware.
- Develop data visualization software to show two dimensional plots of the collected GPR data indicating the linear position and depth of any reflectors that were imaged.
The goal of our two-dimensional plots was to make the reflections from imaged objects clear enough to be detectable by the human eye. In the sponsor’s fully developed system, they plan to have the two-dimensional plots analyzed by a machine learning algorithm to determine the location and depth of buried reflectors.
Meet our team members
Sarah Price
Aasima Gadiwan
Greg Ord
Morgan Grona
Derek Lugowski
Details about our design
HOW OUR DESIGN ADDRESSES PRACTICAL ISSUES
The goal for this use-case is to allow users to perform noninvasive infrastructure inspection to detect health and locations of rebar in concrete. By creating a self-contained and self-powered GPR system and the accompanying software analytics, our solution allows users to mount or attach the system to any piece of equipment. This offers the flexibility to get the GPR system into places previously inaccessible to conventional GPR systems. The sponsor’s current use case is attaching the system to a drone, but other future possibilities may include mounting to a crane, scaffolding, etc. These would all allow for inspection of things like high rise skyscrapers, bridges, or other potentially hard to reach areas.
WHAT MAKES OUR DESIGN INNOVATIVE
Though commercial GPR systems have been developed for infrastructure inspection to detect rebar in concrete, these solutions are usually handheld. The solution developed in our project allows the hardware to be supported by a drone making the system more versatile and maneuverable. This was achieved by making a self-contained power system and testing our software solution in the correct setting for the proposed use-case.
WHAT MAKES OUR DESIGN SOLUTION EFFECTIVE
Our software solution is split into two separate pieces of software. The first software processes the data and saves it to a more compact file format then what is provided by the sponsor’s hardware. The second piece of software is able to import the data files from the first software and generate the two-dimensional visualizations. This is an effective design because it allows the processing step to be run on a different computer if needed. For example, if the sponsor later decides that it would be more time and memory efficient to run the processing step directly on their Linux FPGA, they would be able to do that. Also, by having the import and visualization software separate, we were able to enable that software to import data with other GPR file formats. This allows the user to visualize and compare data collected from both our sponsor’s hardware and other vendors’ hardware.
HOW WE VALIDATED OUR DESIGN SOLUTION
To validate individual steps within the implementation of our signal processing algorithm, we generated plots of the signals and analyzed them to ensure they were correct.
To validate our signal processing as a whole, we conducted full system tests imaging pipe and plates at known positions and heights.
For the power supply PCB, we tested the system near the max power draw and monitored the output voltage and current to ensure that it could sustain the maximum inrush current from the devices connected to it.
FEASIBILITY OF OUR DESIGN SOLUTION
Our software is built using python and QT, which makes it portable.
PCB power system is simple and reliable enough to manufacture at a scale appropriate for our sponsors market and number of customers
The PCB was designed to be light weight, so that it can be carried by a drone.
Partners and mentors
Special thanks to our sponsor Sawback Technologies for providing support and guidance throughout our project.
Thanks to Dr. Fear for providing technical support throughout the difficulties we encountered with data processing and analysis.
Thank you to our TA Elham Sadeghabadi for meeting with our group and providing advice and support through the course of the project.
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