Planning and visualization for automated robotic crane erection processes in construction
Section snippets
Introduction and motivation
Cranes are one of the most heavily used and shared resources in construction sites. Only in the U.S., there are approximately 125,000 cranes operating in the construction industry. These cranes are involved in many different tasks. For example, during the construction of steel or precast reinforced concrete buildings, cranes are not only used for erecting structural members but are also used for lifting precast façade elements, curtain wall systems and many other materials and nonstructural
Previous research
Cranes and automation technologies are two important fundamentals in this research, which aimed at automating the crane erection processes. Previous investigators have researched these two topics for years. This section summarizes previous research results and explains how to expand and integrate the previous efforts to achieve the goal of our research.
Motion planning of a single crane
Current efficiency of crane utilization can be significantly improved by optimizing the moving path and crane operation. Today, the cranes are manipulated by the operators mainly depending on their experiences or even by their intuition. This empirical manipulation can be inefficient and often cause some unsafe movement. Since crane operators cannot always find optimal motions for manipulating a crane particularly optimum simultaneous movement of three of four degree of freedoms, the crane may
Motion planning of multiple cranes
Increasing number of multi-crane constructions is an important motivation for the research. Using multiple cranes in construction is becoming common these days because of the trend toward large-scale or fast-track constructions. It can create several working fronts, which can significantly reduce total erection time. Moreover, very large cranes are often much more expensive and less available in certain areas. In many cases, modifying the design to allow the use of several smaller cranes may
Implementation of iCrane
We implemented the intelligent crane in a computer system, iCrane, which can automatically generate the operation-leveled simulation of erection processes. iCrane was equipped with algorithms developed in this research, having the capacity of (1) generating erection sequence; (2) finding collision-free erection paths of each structural element; (3) planning the motions of construction crane(s) to follow the calculated erection paths; and (4) coordinating the motions between multiple cranes. The
Utilizing iCrane in construction practice
iCrane can automatically search the erection paths, plan the crane motions and visualize detailed erection processes before or during construction. While applied iCrane in construction practice, iCrane system can broadly benefit crane operators and construction management to perform their work more efficiently. The system eventually can be used in design phase to facilitate the design processes.
Having computational methods, we can input construction criteria and geometrical information related
Conclusions
We have developed effective methods to model construction cranes in computers and equipped them with path-planning, collision-detecting and optimization algorithms. The crane models had the capacity of analyzing the geometrical information from given buildings, cranes and construction environments and for searching the safest and most efficient paths to erect a building. We also developed methods to coordinate multiple cranes in a continuously changing construction environment. The intelligent
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