Automated Erection Planning for Tower Cranes in Virtual Construction

Shih-Chung Kang1 and Eduardo Miranda2

Keywords: virtual construction, tower crane, motion planning, construction automation, robotics

Abstract
This research develops computer-aided methods for simulating and visualizing the erection processes in a virtual construction environment. During the erection of a structure, cranes are one of most important and heavily used resources at a site. A detailed and well-planned schedule will greatly help crane operators to cooperate onsite crews and equipment. The research enables the simulation of the erection processes before the real construction and provides the visualization from multiple viewpoints for different users. The simulation and visualization helps the operators and crews on the ground understand what is going on in the jobsite and what will happen next from their own viewpoints. This effective coordination method will shorten the time for communication and decrease possibility of the misunderstanding between the parties. Furthermore, because considering the actual erecting trajectory for every structural element, the simulation system will significantly improve the accuracy of erection scheduling. An accurate schedule will facilitate construction manger to control the expense and schedule in equipment rental, personnel arrangement, and the material delivery. Finding the path that each piece being erected must follow is one of the major challenges to simulate erection activities in a computer (see figure 1). The paths minimize the erection time while at the same time must be safe by avoiding collisions. The research applies Probabilistic Roadmaps (PRM), a motion planning technique, to find the moving trajectories of pieces being erected by the cranes. Since PRM samples the random points in entire configuration space (Cspace) of a robot, its efficiency can be improved by incorporating new sampling techniques that take into account the logistics of construction sites as well as the particular motions of construction cranes. Using the improved PRM, the research develops a computer-aided trajectory planner for tower cranes, and applies the planner to find the operation trajectories for all erection activities. Collision detecting techniques are used to verify the paths of all pieces are collision-free. The efficiency of collision-detecting method will directly influence the efficiency of overall motion planning. Collision detecting methods are commonly applied in robotics. The efficiency of the method depends on the characteristics of the application, such as number of degree of freedom of the robot, speed of motion, and whether the obstacles are static or moving, etc. By means of introducing reasonable tolerances, a simple but efficient collision detecting method is developed in the research, which is particularly efficient to be used in erection processes using tower cranes. The collision detecting algorithm is implemented in the research, and its computation costs and errors are discussed.

1 2

Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University Assistant Professor, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University

Once the path to be followed by each piece has been found, manipulator kinematics is used to find the motions that the crane needs to do in order for the piece to follow the desired paths. Denavit-Hatenberg kinematics, a common notation to present a robot by a mathematical format, is used in the research to treat a construction tower crane as four-degrees-of-freedom robot. The four degrees of freedom include jib rotation, trolley radial movement, cable length, and hook rotation. A transformation function is derived, called kinematics of manipulators, for transforming crane motions to the coordinate of hook position and orientation. Direct and inverse kinamatics of manipulators enable a computer system to describe the cranes behavior using a set of parameters, and to convert the coordinate between cranes configuration and hooks position, which assists the processes of finding erection paths using PRM. Furthermore, the method used in the research can be generalized to be applied to other type of cranes. The research develops a computer-aided tool to automate and visualize the planning of erection processes for steel and pre-cast concrete structures. This tool has the abilities of (1) finding efficient and collision-free trajectories for all elements to be erected in the project, (2) simulating the kinematics of erection equipment, and (3) visualizing individual and overall erection processes. Given the geometry information of a structure and characteristics of a tower crane, the system is able to simulate and visualize the erection activities of each structural element. The erection activity of one structural element includes securing structural element, moving, holding for temporally connecting, and repositioning for lifting the next element. Composing the all erection cycles, an accurate overall erection planning will be obtained. In the short term, this research will assist structural designers and construction managers to select more efficient sequences and trajectories of erections. The system can also be used to provide relative accurate and detailed schedule of erection processes which help improve the safety of crane operations and efficiency of overall projects. In the long term, this research provides the basis for fully automated robotic erection of structures.
B path1 B path2 A A A B

(a) Vertical motion

(b) Rotating tendency

(c) Modified sampling near the loading and unloading regions

Fig 1. Improved Sample Strategies for the CraneSimulator.

Fig 2. Collision detecting when the element approaching the building

Fig 3. Snap Shot of the Simulation of a Crane Using Motion Planning