Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) Integration with Digital Technologies toward Construction 4.0: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been employed in the construction industry in the last decade for various purposes such as progress monitoring and building inspection. Recently, there has been a rising trend of employing UAVs with other digital technologies (DTs), such as Building Information Modeling and Extended Reality. The integration of these technologies encourages automation and digitization toward better project performance. However, little is known about the implementation of UAVs in conjunction with other DTs. Therefore, this study performs a systematic literature review to determine application areas and technology trends regarding UAVs’ integration with other DTs. The search yielded 287 articles, of which 36 satisfied the established inclusion criteria and formed the foundation of this systematic review. Seven application areas of UAV integration with other DTs were identified: progress monitoring, historic building conservation, information management, construction safety, construction education, structural and infrastructure inspection, and transportation. This study also revealed UAV technology trends encouraging automation and digitization: automated progress monitoring, automated UAV inspection planning, real-time video streaming, and parametric model development of historicbuildings. This study is expected to be a starting point of future in-depth research by providing a general understanding of the current applications of UAVs integration with other DTs.