The INSPIRE University Transportation Center (UTC) held its annual meeting in a teleconference format Aug. 3-4. A graduate student poster session was open to graduate students from all INSPIRE consortium institutions. The winning students and their posters are:

• First-place poster: “UAV-based Smart Rock Localization for Determination of Bridge Scour Depth” by Haibin Zhang, a visiting scholar in civil, architectural and environmental engineering at S&T
• Second-place poster: “Bridge Inspection Video Data Analysis for Data-Driven Asset Management” by Muhammad Monjurul Karim, S&T graduate student
• Third-place poster: “Autonomous Ultrasonic Thickness Measurement of Steel Bridge Members using Mobile Sensors” by Yu Otsuki, a graduate assistant in civil and environmental engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

INSPIRE stands for “Inspecting and Preserving Infrastructure through Robotic Exploration.” The transportation center brings together experts in civil engineering, electrical engineering, engineering management and computer science to develop safer, more efficient, and cost-effective methods for bridge inspection and maintenance, which include the use of nondestructive evaluation devices and remotely-controlled robotic platforms.

Additional activities included presentations on technical research by faculty, an executive meeting, an external advisory committee meeting and awards ceremony.

Learn more about the consortium at inspire-utc.mst.edu.