Dynamic structural monitoring using the kinematic positioning of a robotic total station

Many laboratory or indoor tests have revealed the advantages of the kinematic positioning of robotic tachemoeteric systems (RTS), and outdoor applications of the RTS kinematic positioning in the high dynamic tracking are still in study. An ambient vibration test with a Leica TCA2003 total station was conducted to study the feasibility in measuring the dynamic characteristics of cable-stayed bridges. Dynamic data were acquired by using the single-way precise trigonometric leveling method with the automatic tracking model in a 3Hz data rate. Pretreatments (e.g., trend item elimination, smoothing and low-pass frequency filter) and the power spectral density (PSD) approach were employed to obtain the vertical natural frequency of the box girder. The results agree well with the predicted values by the finite element model (FEM) analysis.