Treading new water with a fully automatic sewer inspection system

The Damage Detection System, the SEK, developed by the Fraunhofer IFF on behalf of the Emschergenossenschaft uses a multi-sensory approach for a high-resolution inspection of sewers. In addition to developing innovative hardware and sensor systems, it was necessary to develop a new software interface to assist the operator in viewing and analyzing the inspection data. Modern image processing techniques have been applied to the tasks of creating an augmented 3D virtual-reality reconstruction of the sewer pipe and for automatic detection of various types of damage.