Publications / 2022 Proceedings of the 39th ISARC, Bogotá, Colombia

On the Bar Installation Order for the Automated Fabrication of Rebar Cages

Mahdi Momeni, Johan Relefors, Lars Pettersson, Alessandro Vittorio Papadopoulos and Thomas Nolte
Pages 508-511 (2022 Proceedings of the 39th ISARC, Bogotá, Colombia, ISBN 978-952-69524-2-0, ISSN 2413-5844)
Abstract:

Robotics automation is a promising solution for the fab-rication of structures made out of reinforced concrete. The reinforcement is often installed directly in the form and bar-by-bar. Using bigger pre-fabricated units (cages) may be ben-eficial for saving construction time and better labor safety. In this paper, we focus on the problem of automating the generation of a plan for the installation of rebars, given the digital twin of a desired reinforcement cage design, and of its basic components. More specifically, the plan describes the assembling order for the rebars such that (i) it is possible to fabricate the reinforcement cage by the robots, and (ii) the end product is the final reinforcement cage, ready for instal-lation in the form for the concrete structure. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to automatically compute a feasible installation order for a generic rebar cage. The feasibility of the generated order is also case studied and simulated on a simplified rebar cage under the given assumptions.

Keywords: Robotics for construction; Rebar installation; Automation