Technical Papers
Sep 28, 2020

Intelligent Hoisting with Car-Like Mobile Robots

Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 146, Issue 12

Abstract

The construction industry’s traditional hoisting system always needs workers to complete the tasks involved, with concomitant extra labor costs and attention to the workers’ safety. This paper describes the development of an intelligent hoisting system to optimize the hoisting process, involving the application of robotic cars and vision-based recognition. In the design of the hoisting system, electric hooks were used and maneuvered by a robotic car while the vision-based recognition system—based on capturing images by the camera—arranges the robotic motion. The Yolo v2 recognition algorithm was used, which provides fast and efficient vision-based recognition. More than 30 trials in an experimental prefabrication factory indicated that the system had a significant success rate of approximately 92.5% (3.7/4)—the proportion of hooks successfully grappling the hoist points—verifying the feasibility of the system. The primary contribution of this paper is in the development and demonstration of an intelligent hoisting system to optimize the hoisting process, involving the application of robotic cars and vision-based recognition, thus furthering the application of computer vision techniques and robotics to construction work.

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Data Availability Statement

Data generated or analyzed during the study are available from the corresponding author by request. Information about the Journal’s data-sharing policy can be found here: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0001263.

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Go to Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 146Issue 12December 2020

History

Received: Jan 14, 2020
Accepted: Jun 16, 2020
Published online: Sep 28, 2020
Published in print: Dec 1, 2020
Discussion open until: Feb 28, 2021

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Heng Li, Ph.D. [email protected]
Professor, Dept. of Building and Real Estate, Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ., Hong Kong, China. Email: [email protected]
Xiaochun Luo, Ph.D. [email protected]
Senior Research Fellow, Dept. of Building and Real Estate, Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ., Hong Kong, China. Email: [email protected]
Professor, School of Built Environment, Queensland Univ. of Technology, 2 George St., Brisbane, QLD 4001, Australia (corresponding author). ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7135-1201. Email: [email protected]

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