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The proceedings of the 12th ISAAC (Warsaw 1995)* were edited by three members of the 12th ISAAC Committee: Budny, McCrea and Szymanski. The volume covers more than 600 pages and includes the following sections:
0. Plenary session
- Health, safety and social issues
- Road construction
- Hazardous waste handling and disaster relief
- Economics and management aspects in automation technology
- Inspection, repair and maintenance
- Excavators and soil handling
- Industrial building and house construction
- Masonry construction
- Large-scale and heavy manipulation
- Robot intelligence and external sensing
- Simulation, control and path planning
- CAD/CAM and computer integrated construction
- Off-site manufacturing, fabrication assembly and finishing
- Mobility, obstacle and collision avoidance
- Image processing and robot vision
- Groundworks (a separate section owing to a large number of papers in section 2b, excavators and soil handling)
The remainder of this article will focus on highlights of the Symposium, including three papers from the plenary session and the three papers, which received the awards granted by the Symposium Awards Committee.
In the plenary session Mr O'Brien spoke about system deployment structures as a new general form of robotic construction agent. His paper examines the problem of the development of industrially useful general-purpose robotic construction agents and discusses a number of key intellectual constructs used to create them. A new abstract notion based around the idea of systems deployment structures is presented. The implications of thinking with this new notion are discussed and a number of practical applications are presented.
Mr Van Gassel presented a method for analysing mechanised and robotised production processes on the building site. The method is based on the theory of system analysis, which describes information, material and energy transformation processes. The basic diagram of the worker-equipment system was developed for this purpose. The concept of mechanisation and robotisation are then explained, followed by the mechanisation graph, possible mechanisation phases, and the product and process development graph. Finally, future building site developments are indicated.
Closing the plenary session, Professor A Warszawski discussed the implementation prospects of automation in construction, focusing on technical and economic barriers. Paraphrasing his arguments; the possibilities of application of robotisation and automation in construction have been widely explored over the last 15 years. The expected benefits of robotised construction were as follows: productivity savings, elimination of dirty and dangerous tasks, improved quality of construction work and alleviation of labour shortage in countries with labour scarcity in construction. Extensive research in construction automation has been conducted in many countries and a considerable number of prototypes of robotised systems have been developed and tested. Despite this effort and the obvious benefits of automation, implementation of automation in construction practice has been, to date, limited.
The main reasons for this lack of success can be enumerated as follows:
- Economic environment not suitable for robot use
- Conservatism on the part of construction managers
- Difficult adaptation to the existing organisation of building sites
- Difficult adaptation to the prevalent building designs
- Complicated handling and operation
- Need for special training
- Failure to deal with a robot as a system
The presentation addressed these problems and discussed the possible solutions to overcome them.
The award for the best theory paper was granted to A Fukagawa, T Muro, K Hozumi and T Matsuike. A series of laboratory tests by using a model excavator for the diaphragm wall method were carried out in order to investigate the interaction between the model excavator and the surrounding ground. The behaviour of the excavator was theoretically formulated and the theoretical values were compared with the experimental data. As a result, the calculated displacement of the excavator showed good accordance with the measured values for each ground condition investigated.
The award for the best technical paper was granted to H Tserng, R Kunigahalli and J Russel. The construction workers and operators associated with the sanitary waste landfilling operation are at high health risks because of constant exposure to harmful solids and gases. Automation of spreading and compacting processes during landfilling operations can result in improved safety due to reduction in exposure of workers to harmful environment. The paper described software systems developed to assist (1) design of landfill cells, and (2) generation of an area-covering path plan for spreading and compaction processes during a landfilling operation. A given landfill site can be partitioned into 3D cells using a probabilistic model for waste generation that takes into account the population of the community served by the landfill. Partitioning of landfill is performed by employing a recursive spatial decomposition technique.
The award for best practical paper was granted to Mr M El Khafif. The intention of this research and development project was to develop a trenchless method to reconnect branch lines to the main sewer producing a watertight connection for the rehabilitation of sewers by PE-HD relining. Apart from the ecological aspect, other advantages are the economics and the easy use in practice. The practicability of the new method has been successfully tested under site conditions in the laboratory canal at the institute of Construction Machinery of the Aachen University of Technology (RWTH). First site experiences are planned for June 1995.
- To obtain copies of the Proceedings please contact:
*Automation and Robotics in Construction ã XII Proceedings of the 12th ISARC
IMBIGS, Warsazawa, 1995, XII +578 pages, hard binding.
To be ordered from the Editor: IMBiGS, PL-02-673 Warsaw, Racjonalizacji street 6/8 phone +4822 437371 or fax +4822 435981 price US$95 (Inc mail) can be prepaid by Visa card or through bank.
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