The Development of a Low Cost Approach to the Prototyping of Construction Plant

Because of the high development costs of an item of automated or robotic construction plant there is a need for a low cost rapid prototyping system which can support the early stages of the design and development process and provide feedback to the designer of the effect of different kinematic architectures on performance. To be fully effective this same system should also provide for the support for another areas of the design process including support for design and evaluation of the user interface and for software design and evaluation, including code generation.

The paper describes the development of such a rapid prototyping system and illustrates how it can be used in support not only of the general design process but of other areas such as task evaluation.