A UCF team led by Necati Catbas has invented four new tools that use artificial intelligence and virtual reality to enhance the structural health monitoring of aging buildings, bridges, and roads. Traditional monitoring methods involve onsite visual inspection, which can be costly, create road and bridge traffic closures, and even endanger inspectors.

The new inventions put technologies such as computer vision, augmented reality, virtual reality, and AI to work instead. For example, the Collective Intelligence Framework blends human-centric AI with mixed reality to fast-track inspections and keep costs down while ensuring accuracy. Another invention, the Generative Adversarial Network, uses AI to actually predict damage in advance.