NIST Construction Automation Program Report No. 4: Non-Intrusive Scanning Technology for Construction Status Determination.
NIST Construction Automation Program Report No. 4:
Non-Intrusive Scanning Technology for Construction
Status Determination.
(9562 K)
Cheok, G. S.; Lipman, R. R.; Witzgall, C.; Bernal, J.;
Stone, W. C.
NISTIR 6457; 98 p. January 2000.
Available from:
National Technical Information Service
(NTIS), Technology Administration, U.S. Department of
Commerce, Springfield, VA 22161.
Telephone:
1-800-553-6847 or 703-605-6000;
Fax: 703-605-6900.
Website: http://www.ntis.gov
Order number: PB2000-100622
Keywords:
construction; lasers; 3D models; construction
automation; cut-fill calculation; Delaunay
triangulation; laser radar; laser imaging; metrology;
terrain modeling
Abstract:
Approximately 2% of all construction work must be
devoted to manually intensive quality control and
tracking of work completion, including operations
involving earthmoving and bulk materials handling. Any
technology that can reduce this burden and decrease time
to delivery will offer a significant competitive edge.
One of the more difficult things to track at a
construction site is the geometry of things that are not
neatly classified as "components." The ability to
capture such "amorphous" data becomes important if one
is to achieve true automation. Amorphous data include
such things as the state of excavation of terrain, the
presence of raw materials (e.g., sand, gravel) depots;
the location and extent of spoil piles; progress of a
concrete casting; highway alignment; paving operations;
etc. To obtain this information, the current
state-of-practice is to conduct surveys which can be
time-consuming and costly. The objectives of the project
are to utilize new scanning technologies to improve
critical construction status assessment needs by making
these measurements faster and cheaper than traditional
methods and to develop, in conjunction with industry,
standard means for transmission and interpretation of
such data. It focuses on the development of an
integrated software and wireless remote sensing system
that will accept input from a variety of high speed
automated ranging sensors and create a 3D model of the
present state of a portion of a construction site. This
report details the initial activities in the project and
documents procedures used to acquire and display data
obtained from a scanner and to perform simple volume
calculations. A disk with the source codes for the
programs developed as past of these efforts is included
with this report.
Building and Fire Research Laboratory
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, MD 20899