Kitchener startup using AI to better inspect infrastructure

A local startup says its AI technology can take safety inspections to the next level. CTV’s Colton Wiens explains how.

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.

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, Mansour 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,” Mansour said.