Autonomous Bridge Inspection Drone BridgeEye: Millimeter-Wave and Ultrasound Fusion Detects 0.1mm Structural Defects

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In November 2028, DJI Industrial and China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) jointly released BridgeEye — an autonomous inspection drone designed specifically for bridges, tunnels, and elevated structures. The product's core capability is autonomous flight inside structures with zero GPS signal while detecting 0.1mm-level structural defects through multi-sensor fusion.

BridgeEye's technical architecture has three components. The flight platform is a DJI-customized octocopter with collision protection guards and contact landing gear, capable of flying inside narrow bridge box girders. The perception system fuses millimeter-wave radar (detecting internal rebar corrosion and voids), ultrasonic sensors (detecting surface and subsurface cracks), and 4K optical cameras (recording surface conditions). The navigation system uses SLAM algorithms for centimeter-level positioning accuracy in GPS-denied environments.

"Traditional bridge inspection requires scaffolding, traffic closures, and weeks of work for a large bridge," said CCCC Chief Engineer Wang Zhigang. "BridgeEye completes a comprehensive bridge inspection in 2 hours, reducing costs by over 90%."

The product has received Ministry of Transport certification and has been deployed on 200 bridges nationwide. During inspection of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, BridgeEye identified 12 micro-cracks and 3 rebar corrosion areas missed by manual inspection. On the Shanghai-Kunming Expressway bridge cluster, BridgeEye inspected 50 bridges in 3 days — a task that would have taken 6 months by traditional methods.

AI defect classification is another core capability. The system analyzes sensor data in real time during inspection, automatically categorizing defects into five types: cracks, corrosion, deformation, water seepage, and voids, with four severity levels. Defect classification accuracy is 96%, with severity assessment at 91%.

DJI Industrial plans to launch a repair version of BridgeEye in 2029 that can not only detect defects but also carry repair materials (such as epoxy injection systems) for on-site patching, transforming bridge maintenance from detect-then-wait to detect-and-repair.