Review of UAV–AI-Based Automated Visual Inspection Technologies and Their Applicability to High-Risk Construction Machinery

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) combined with artificial intelligence (AI) have recently emerged as effective tools for automating safety inspections in hazardous and hard-to-reach industrial environments.UAV-AI-based automated visual inspection technologies have been widely applied to infrastructure such as bridges, towers, and port facilities to detect, segment, and classify surface defects.However, their application to high-risk construction machinery remains limited, and few review studies have addressed this gap.This study provides a comprehensive review of existing UAV-AI inspection technologies and evaluates their applicability to heavy construction equipment such as tower cranes and pile drivers.The findings aim to establish a conceptual foundation for future research and offer strategic insights into the development of intelligent, real-time, and automated inspection systems suitable for complex and high-risk construction environments.