Television – Special applications – Hazardous or inaccessible
Reexamination Certificate
1998-02-26
2001-01-16
Lee, Young (Department: 2713)
Television
Special applications
Hazardous or inaccessible
C348S125000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06175380
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates generally to a system and method for randomly accessing stored compressed video footage or other continuous image footage and a field inspection system employing the method and system for randomly accessing stored compressed video footage. More specifically, the present invention relates to a field inspection system for acquiring, reviewing, and archiving field inspection video.
Most municipalities that are responsible for maintaining sewer systems, require that the periodic inspections of the sewer lines be accomplished by first having a field inspection crew videotape the inside of the sewer lines and then having an engineer review these video tapes to assess the condition and defects in the sewer lines and to recommend whatever actions are necessary to repair such defects. An example of a pipeline data collection and display system that may be used to obtain video footage of the interior of a sewer line is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,974,168. In this disclosed system, a field inspection crew positions a van
11
(
FIG. 1
) including the inspection equipment, close to a manhole entry
16
of a sewer line
15
to be inspected. First, the crew backwashes the sewer line, and then sets up the inspection equipment as shown in
FIG. 1
, by placing a surface roller assembly
18
at the opening of manhole entry
16
and placing a wind-up winch assembly
21
at the opening of an adjacent manhole entry
17
. A tow cable
22
extending from wind-up winch assembly
21
is passed through a manhole down roller assembly
20
and connected to a monitoring device
14
, which includes a video camera. A cable assembly
12
coupled at one end to electronic survey equipment
43
located in van
11
, is passed down through surface roller assembly
18
and a manhole down roller assembly
19
and coupled to an opposite end of monitoring device
14
. Having described the physical assembly of a typical field inspection system, the manner by which the video information is obtained, processed, taped, reviewed, and subsequently archived will now be described with reference to FIG.
2
.
As the field inspection crew moves monitoring device
14
through the sewer line, the video footage obtained from the video camera is fed to a display device and monitored by an operator in van
11
(step
52
). While monitoring the video footage, the operator prepares a handwritten logsheet identifying the suspected defects and anomalies and their location in the sewer line (step
54
). Some of this information written on the logsheet may be entered on a keyboard such that the system may generate and overlay graphics showing this information on the video footage to which it pertains (step
56
). The video footage is recorded on a video tape along with the overlaid graphics using a video cassette recorder (VCR) (step
58
). Then after the field inspection crew has filmed the designated portion of sewer line
15
, it sends the video tape and the handwritten logsheet to an engineer typically employed by the municipality (step
60
).
The engineer's job is to review the field inspection videos supplied by the inspection crew and to recommend what action is to be taken to repair any confirmed defects or anomalies. To perform this task, the engineer will place the video tape in a VCR and review the logsheet to determine whether there are any suspected defects in the sewer line, provided of course that the logsheet is still with its associated video tape. Then the engineer fast-forwards, pauses, and rewinds the video tape to locate the video footage corresponding to each suspected defect indicated on the associated logsheet (step
62
). Based upon the review of the video tape, the engineer writes a report identifying each defect and recommending a course of action to repair the defect (step
64
). Provided the recommended course of action can be carried out within the municipality's budget, the municipality will accept bids from contractors to repair the sewer line (step
66
). Then after a bid is accepted, a contractor will repair the sewer line in accordance with the engineer's recommended course of action (step
68
) and the municipality will dispatch the field inspection crew to again video tape the repaired sewer line so that the engineer can review the contractor's work to ensure that the sewer line was repaired properly (step
70
). After this process is completed, the logsheet, videotapes, and engineering reports are archived typically by placing the paper documents within the video tape slip cover along with the video tape and placed on a shelf (step
72
).
The above described methodology is inefficient for several reasons. First, requiring an engineer to fast-forward and rewind the video tape to find those portions within the video that show the suspected defects listed on the logsheet is frustrating and time consuming for the engineer. Additionally, archiving of the video tapes and logsheets in this manner often results in the logsheets becoming lost or otherwise separated from their associated video tapes.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, the present invention has been made to overcome the above problems. Specifically, one aspect of the present invention is to provide an efficient means for storing, retrieving, and archiving field inspection videos or other continuous imagery. Another aspect of the present invention is to provide an efficient means for storing, accessing, and archiving electronic logsheets with their associated field inspection image footage. An additional aspect of the present invention is to provide a system for randomly accessing compressed image footage corresponding to each entry on an electronic logsheet in order to save an engineer the time required to locate and view the desired image footage on the video tape. Still yet another aspect of the present invention is to provide a system that automatically identifies and assesses each defect found through the use of a field inspection video and automatically produces a report recommending actions to be taken to cure such defects while producing an electronic logsheet for subsequent review by an engineer.
Additional features and advantages of the present invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. To achieve these and other advantages, and in accordance with the purpose of the invention as embodied and broadly described herein, the pipeline inspection system comprises receiving means for receiving an image signal representing video or other continuous image footage of the pipeline under inspection, compressing means for compressing the received image signal to provide compressed image data having a plurality of sequential frames including reference frames appearing at predefined intervals, and means for creating an electronic logsheet including a table listing suspected defects and/or anomalies in the pipeline recorded in the video footage and, for each suspected defect and anomaly, a pointer identifying a reference frame of the compressed image data closest to a beginning point of the video footage showing the associated suspected defect or anomaly. The pipeline inspection system may further include means for storing the compressed image data, the logsheet data, and images of the original order of the following documents that include corroborating field-acquired data: the handwritten logsheet; the inventory; the manhole and pipeline inspection sheets; the assessment maps; as-built drawings; odor and corrosion data; and the data from the Legacy Sewer Information Management System. The pipeline inspection system may include means for burning the compressed video and/or other imagery, the logsheet data, and the corroborating data in a compact disc. The system may also include display means for displaying the table, input means for permitting a user to select a suspected defect or anomaly listed on the table, decompressing means for decompressing
Lee Young
Peninsular Technologies, LLC
Price Heneveld Cooper DeWitt & Litton
LandOfFree
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