Latest news with #ConeLabs
CBC
13-05-2025
- Automotive
- CBC
Kitchener company can find 'even the smallest crack' in bridges and roads using AI technology
A Kitchener, Ont., tech startup is using drones and artificial intelligence technology to inspect bridges and roads and offer solutions for repairing them. Albert Mansour, the CEO and co-founder of ConeLabs technology, says his company's technology will highlight visual defects and catch problems with a structure that can hopefully be fixed before the problem gets too serious. "We look for any clues. We look for cracks, spalls [breaks], things that give us indications of the condition of the structure," Mansour said. "Our AI finds it all. So now we have a complete understanding of where even the smallest crack is. Even if that crack doesn't warrant any action today, we at least now have it tracked, identified." Mansour says their technology is meant to help the job done by human inspectors who oversee the 53,000 bridges in Canada and about 620,000 located in the United States. How they collect the data ConeLabs uses drones to scan thousands of images of a bridge or road then software helps them reconstruct an accurate photogrammetric 3D model in high resolution to detect any issues. "We can get sufficient coverage, resolution, get close enough to the surface to get the right imagery. So drones come out, they capture images and then we reconstruct that into a 3D model," Mansour said. Kitchener startup develops technology that uses AI and 3D models to inspect roads and bridges 10 minutes ago Duration 1:54 ConeLabs Technology is keeping an modern eye on the structure of bridges and roads. It uses drones, artificial intelligence and 3D models to detail any potential defects of a road or bridge before it's too late. CBC K-W's Joe Pavia a bridge in Kitchener with Albert Mansour the CEO and co-found of ConeLabs to talk about how the technology works. "Then our AI within the 3D data finds these cracks, finds the defects, finds spalls and rust and processes that. So, it's a much richer understanding of where each crack is versus just a zoomed in picture. And if there are, the spatial positioning of one defect to another because that might give us clues as to a deeper issue that's happening." Monsour says the information they gather will allow a municipality to save time and act early to fix any issues with the structure they have tested and eliminate or avoid "long drawn out repairs that happen during summer construction." The ConeLabs co-founder hopes to one day expand their inspections to also include other larger structures including buildings, farm silos as well as runways and railways. Mansour hopes to expand its inspection work to include more than bridges and roads. "Anything that needs constant inspection, we can train our AI to inspect that asset," said Mansour. "Buildings, runways, and other large [structures] like silos, power lines and railways. The opportunity is vast and abundant." Company part of Pitch Kitchener initiative ConeLabs was selected to collaborate with the city during a Pitch Kitchener imitative. Three companies were selected to pilot their technologies to allow staff to assess their potential for permanent use by the city. That announcement was in March and at the time, Kitchener Mayor Berry Vrbanovic said the $100,000 in funding for the three companies was a way for the city to help "grow and support locally-grown technology companies." "Through efforts like Pitch Kitchener and the recently launched Support Local campaign, we are ensuring that our local economy remains strong and future-ready," Vrbanovic said in a release. The other two companies chosen as part of the initiative were Real Life Robotics and TextGenetic. Real Life Robotics will use senors and AI-driven machine learning to analyze the operations at Doon Valley Golf Course. TextGenetic will use an AI platform to flag potential issues with the city's fleet of vehicles early with an aim of lowering overall maintenance costs.
CBC
13-05-2025
- Automotive
- CBC
Kitchener startup develops technology that uses AI and 3D models to inspect roads and bridges
ConeLabs Technology is keeping an modern eye on the structure of bridges and roads. It uses drones, artificial intelligence and 3D models to detail any potential defects of a road or bridge before it's too late. CBC K-W's Joe Pavia a bridge in Kitchener with Albert Mansour the CEO and co-found of ConeLabs to talk about how the technology works.
CTV News
02-05-2025
- Business
- CTV News
Kitchener startup using AI to better inspect infrastructure
A Kitchener based startup is trying to find a better solution for inspecting major infrastructure like bridges, roadways and buildings. ConeLabs created an engineering-grade platform that uses Artificial Intelligence and 3D modelling to catch things the naked eye might miss. 'Because we can't keep up. If you simply Google search 'structural failure'. Unfortunately, it happens way too often. It's not a function of lack of inspection, it's actually a function of lack of available inspectors,' Albert Mansour, CEO and co-founder of ConeLabs, said. Mansour and a team of engineers spent a couple years inputting data to teach the AI what to look for. 'It allows us to just keep up. So today, if you look up bridge inspection, we're shutting down lanes of highways. We have folks rope accessing, we put people underneath bridges from a bucket truck. So all of that is a very resource intensive, time-consuming task,' Mansour said. Images are taken using a phone or a drone. The images are turned into a 3D model, and AI analyses for any signs of damage. The drone can follow a flight path around a bridge, so it never has to fly directly over the bridge. 'What we are building couldn't be imagined more than two years ago. to process imagery, make a 3D model, find defects in three dimensions, The level of compute required frankly didn't exist before. And that's why, in 2023, is when we all heard about AI and ChatGPT, that applied to us too. That maturity, and compute gave us the ability to build out this technology,' Mansour said. ConeLabs rendering ConeLabs inspects a bridge in this rendering. (Submitted/ConeLabs) Since it's inception, Communitech has helped connect ConeLabs with the City of Kitchener. The city is using it as part of a pilot project to inspect two bridges and one road. 'You're always skeptical about new technologies and how you can use it, but what we've seen so far is it's built our vision of what we can do and how we can analyze these structures,' Chris Spere, director of engineering services for the City of Kitchener, said. While the pilot project has only used the technology for the two bridges, and at Erinbrook Dr., the city said it sees the potential for it and how it could be used more in the future. 'It could save us time and money as we get further into a process. So it's the quality of the data and the quantities that we can extract from that software that is really going to prove to be beneficial to us,' Spere said. While the city is using it just as a pilot now, Mantour said ConeLabs is targeting other municipalities and engineering firms as they continue to grow, to try and find simpler, safer and faster solutions to inspecting. 'A few companies have declared they're building something similar. So it's kind of a race to see who comes out with the solution first,' Mantour said.
