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Component pose reconstruction using a single robotic total station for panelized building envelopes

by Mengjia Tang, Nolan W Hayes, Bryan P Maldonado Puente, Diana E Hun
Publication Type
Conference Paper
Book Title
2024 Proceedings of the 41st ISARC, Lille, France
Publication Date
Page Numbers
105 to 112
Publisher Location
United States of America
Conference Name
International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (ISARC 2024)
Conference Location
Lille, France
Conference Sponsor
The International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction
Conference Date
-

The construction industry can benefit greatly from increased automation in construction processes in terms of precision, time, and labor costs. This is especially true for prefabricated construction for either new buildings or envelope retrofits. Here, prefabricated components are manufactured offsite according to design specifications and installed onsite. Accurate information on the component’s position and orientation (pose) is needed to achieve this. A tool named “Real-Time Evaluator” (RTE), designed to autonomously track prefabricated components as they are being installed and provide real-time installation instructions, is currently under development using a single robotic total station. This is challenging since at least three points are needed to determine the pose of an object in space. To achieve this goal with a single robotic total station, two key algorithms were developed: the “resection” algorithm aligns the digital twin with the physical twin regardless of the location of the total station, and the “transformation” algorithm gives instructions of translations and rotations to installers to achieve the desired installation pose. The algorithms were evaluated experimentally on a lab-scale demonstration. Results show that the resection algorithm achieved an average error of < 3.1 mm, while the transformation algorithm predicted the rotation angle along a single axis with an error of < 0.5◦.