The Use of Boston Dynamics SPOT in Support of LiDAR Scanning on Active Construction Sites

With the recent commercial availability of autonomous mobility platforms, construction researchers have focused their attention to the application of advanced robotic tools on jobsites. One such mobility platform is Boston Dynamic's robot, "SPOT." The software development kit (SDK) enabled, quadruped robot has the infrastructure to attach interchangeable payloads including LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) scanners. Researchers have conducted a pilot study comparatively analyzing terrestrial LiDAR scans from a human-based tripod scan system and the scans executed by SPOT in both manual and autonomous modes. The research looked at three metrics - quality of scans, productivity savings, and robot accuracy. The result shows that although scan quality is slightly diminished due to the height and shape of the robot, the productivity gains from an autonomous robot could offset the scan quality with additional scans. In addition, in small sample testing, the robot was accurate in returning to a pre-defined location in autonomous mode. Due to the page limit, this paper only presents the results and findings of quality of scans of this this research study.