3D Shape Determination and Geometric Assessment During Digital Fabrication


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Author / Producer

Date

2022

Publication Type

Doctoral Thesis

ETH Bibliography

yes

Citations

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Data

Abstract

The construction industry is undergoing a technological revolution with the goal to increase productivity, efficiency, and functionality. The drivers for the necessary changes are associated with the ever-increasing shortage of skilled labour, growing number of construction projects, as well as the aims to reduce material waste of the construction and with it associated impact on the environment. Digital fabrication is leading the automation and digitization advancements impacting all phases of a building's lifetime, with an immediate effect on design, fabrication, assembly, and maintenance. These advancements are key enablers for the construction sector to meet rising global demand for more infrastructure and buildings, while operating in a world with ever-growing constraints on used resources. In order for digital fabrication to establish and optimize the automated processes, an improved understanding of the behaviour of the fabricated structural elements before, during, and after fabrication is needed. For this, geometrical information about the fabricated objects and their changes over time with sufficient spatio-temporal coverage, resolution, and accuracy is required. Transition from highly controlled research environments to practical applications in industry requires the core-competence of engineers to design, plan, and realize measurement systems including processing with the appropriate technical characteristics, depending on the application. Making use of the metrology tools shows potential in tackling the existing challenges, such as localization of work pieces within the robotic setup and relative to the design models, handling of unknown, partially unknown or imprecise geometries and bespoke work pieces, reaction to unforeseen errors, surface inspection, as well as the unpredictability and complexity of the used cementitious materials, among others. This thesis contributes to the advancement of automation and digitization of construction methods, specifically robotic spraying of concrete elements chosen as the application case. This is achieved by means of development of a measurement system employing state-of-the-art industrial depth cameras and a data processing scheme for 3D shape determination and assessment for digital fabrication. In particular, the main contributions presented in this thesis are: i) assessment and improvement of distance measurement accuracy for time-of-flight (ToF) camera Helios Lucid, including the development and implementation of the assessment procedure, ii) rebar detection and digital reconstruction for robotic concrete spraying, iii) geometric feedback system for robotic spraying, and iv) surface finish classification using depth camera data. The work presented in this thesis was conducted within the research consortium NCCR Digital Fabrication and as a part of the Innosuisse project of robotic concrete spraying.

Publication status

published

Editor

Contributors

Examiner: Wieser, Andreas
Examiner : Lloret-Fritschi, Ena
Examiner : Gerke, Markus

Book title

Journal / series

Volume

Pages / Article No.

Publisher

ETH Zurich

Event

Edition / version

Methods

Software

Geographic location

Date collected

Date created

Subject

Digital Fabrication; Quality Inspection; Industrial Metrology; Geodesy

Organisational unit

03964 - Wieser, Andreas / Wieser, Andreas check_circle
02284 - NFS Digitale Fabrikation / NCCR Digital Fabrication

Notes

Funding

-- - NCCR Digital Fabrication (SNF)

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