Improving Harbour Infrastructure Inspections by Autonomous Corrosion Sensors Interrogated by Drones

This paper reports the development of cumulative corrosion sensors dedicated to the monitoring of corrosion of rebars in concrete infrastructure such as harbours. The use of electrical resistance corrosion sensors to form a wireless sensor network is first presented. Embedding such sensors inside concrete is possible but face to some challenges due to the presence of cables in the infrastructure and the need of replacing batteries. An alternative to this method is the use of wireless and battery-less corrosion sensors based on the Radio Frequency Identification technology. In particular, the interrogation of these embedded sensors by unmanned surface vehicle is discussed.