Chaudhari-B4-A Team-Project

Joseph Chaudhari

Dr. James Mitchell

AE-510

7 February 2017

B4: Why did I chose my project topic? How is it related to Intelligent Buildings? Challenges?

The topic my team and I agreed upon doing a research project/paper about was “Robotics Automating Construction Site Surveying”. We, myself, Ronald Herazo, and Zhijing Zheng, chose this topic because we felt this will/could speed up and better the entire process of site development and construction of proposed structure. Robotic surveying systems are in place in today’s surveying world; however, it is rare, as they are enormously expensive, to find a surveying system that can scan an entire area and create a three-dimensional, not two-dimensional (that already exists), product for surveyors, designers, and engineers to look at. This three-dimensional product that would be produced by the surveying system would be done so by means of infrared scanners, and if need be an ultrasonic-like means of detection, and would save crucial time in the design process of construction sites and buildings (both on the interior and exterior). Think about it, if you were able to look at a three-dimensional model of a room or construction site wouldn’t you have way less questions for the surveyors or folks who sent this model to you opposed to a two-dimensional model. Design errors and hick-ups would come down immensely. A mobile version of this three-dimensional surveying equipment could cut even more time out of the design process of a structure; although, this system would have to be extraordinarily dynamic and thus be extremely expensive (we talk about one of these mobile systems in our abstract).

How is our project topic, robotic surveying systems on construction sites, related to intelligent buildings? Two large links connect our project to IB. One of these links is the idea of big data. With three-dimensional scanning an entire desired area can be accounted for. Once a model of this area is created via infrared 3D surveying technology, it can be used in almost all phases of design. To go a step further, if/when the 3D model is uploaded to design software like Revit, it can be accessed by, hypothetically, all parties involved in the construction of the structure. Once each party involved in the construction process have access to the model, they can then update and easily ask questions about the model if they fail to understand or are unclear on something. Not only would the creation and uploading of a three-dimensional model (created by robotic surveying equipment most likely using infrared scanners and sensors) shorten meeting and project discussion time but its creation would also creative closer links between different parties in the construction process as they would, ideally, all be collaborating on the same model. The other link our project has to IB would be the push our project has towards incorporating artificial intelligence on the construction site via robotic survey systems (more advanced and independent than the ones we already see on sites). As AI keeps creeping into construction sites, well see faster projects and, if the AI is programmed well enough, more efficient/ safer projects. Will AI lead to job loss? Sure, change in industry always leaves some without jobs. However, robotic surveying systems could be advantageous to companies that can afford to buy them and still maintain their staff numbers as the new robotic (AI based) systems could lead to less folk needed per job, thus giving the company the opportunity to seek out more work and bring in more money.

Challenges with this project idea? Challenges are around every corner and range from human error and ignorance to malfunction of robotic systems to acts of nature where systems are destroyed by water (I’ve seen surveying systems disappear over a matter of hours in the North-west Indian monsoon season around July-August) or animals (in western Gujarat, where wild lions and jaguars roam, construction can stop entirely if the animals decide they want to “take over” the site; you can’t say no to a pack of 12 lions). Sensors will be an issue too as they are often small and easily broken. One of the largest issues will be costs. Some of these mobile robotic surveying systems which can be strapped to the top of a truck can cost upwards of 150K.

References:

1.       Almega Geosystems. Video Demo Leica Pegasus: Two. N.p.: YouTube, n.d. Web. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pBLRnseIuQ&t=256s>.

2.       Autodeskrecap. "3D Laser Scanning Made Easy with Autodesk ReCap 360 Ultimate." YouTube. YouTube, 28 Apr. 2014. Web. 03 Feb. 2017.

Comments:

Ksara/Hovey: I’m glad you confirmed that a green building is not the same thing as an intelligent building. I think an interesting side of green buildings vs. intelligent buildings that your project could shine some light on would be how these two different types of building design affect the ability of a building to become the other (go from green to IB or vice versa). I hope you include some ways of pacifying the dread some owners may have of owning/building green or intelligent buildings (does the government offer any tax breaks on buildings that are green or intelligent?)

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/blog-post-4-ksara-hovey.html

Selden: This project is going to be awesome. I would love to live/design entirely intelligent or “smart” homes. Sensors will definitely play an instrumental role in achieving this type of housing. I would love to see your project include a small blip about how these new smart design home could then have/generate a state/nation/world-wide structural health monitoring database for all house designs of the same scope. This could be huge in sharing deficiency related data and keeping a real-time eye on the health of all of these structures.

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/selden-b4-homes-and-artificial.html

Dannemann: I like the fact that you brought up source reliability. As I am not the best coder nor a robotics engineer, how do I know if my sources relating to AI are any good (obviously we can make a pretty good determination on most sources)? Assessing cost may of pieces of AI-run equipment may also prove to be difficult. I have not yet looked directly for the costs of say a 3D surveying system but I know the internet via is not pushing them at you trying to get you to buy them. Ease of use will be tough to assess because it may be impossible to actually test a system your project deals with out and every user will have a different learning curving when it comes to AI powered systems.

URL: https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/b4-group-c-peter-dannemann.html

Assignment B4 - Group A - Ronald Herazo

B4 - Ronald Herazo

Robotics Automating Construction Site Surveying

I will be working with Zhijing Zheng and Joseph Chaudhari in this project. Surveying is the technique and science of determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional position of points as well as the distance and angles between them. In this particular project, we want to focus on how robotics can be used in surveying, how this feature can be improved, and how important is having a well-engineered device in surveying. Back in time, surveyors had a difficult time trying to do topography in the woods and streets. Nowadays, surveyors have the privilege to use Trible S6 and Leica TS06 instruments. Both instruments have one-man mode, which allows the user to work alone and collect the data without having any issues. In addition, we will highly discuss all the features that new surveying instruments provide; this includes: 3D scanning, one-man set up, and reading coordinates from raw files.

This particular topic was selected because surveying is the first thing you need to do in every project. In other words, if you do not collect enough information from the site or if you do not have the adequate instruments, the company won’t be able to do anything with the data. Another thing that caught our attention was the 3D laser scanning instruments. I had the chance to see these instruments during my last CO-OP, and it is very interesting how they are capable to storage a huge amount of data. We also want to look deeper on these instruments in order to understand all their functionalities. I believe after investigating their functionalities, we can see what possible changes could be made in these instruments regarding their robotic performance.

The relation to intelligent building is more with 3D components. Three-dimensional laser scanning instruments can perform three-dimensional views of any structure. This includes internal and external components. Regarding internal components, the instruments can be manually set with coordinates and angles in order to perform a three-dimensional scan inside the building. Having three-dimensional plans, engineers can easily make changes in the design. On the other side, a three-dimensional laser scanning instrument can also be attached to a vehicle. This allows the surveyor to collect all the data around the building faster; drones can also be used in this particular case.

I believe the biggest challenge will be understanding the mathematics behind the surveying instrument. We really want to provide a good understanding of these surveying instruments and how robotics have improved surveying in the past 20 years. Also, we want to add some comments from surveyors that have been working in the field for decades. The purpose of having this information is to see how much surveying has improved in the last two decades.

3D scanning

Indoor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHn2G2Mk3Oc

Outdoor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pBLRnseIuQ&t=256s

Park,

I really want to see how this project ends up. It seems that Revit is not the only software capable of managing 3D structures. I would like to see how many families Bentley Architecture software accepts. Now, you make think about doing the opposite of what you are working on. I believe you can also create a model with Bentley Architecture, and transfer it to Revit, but do you think the result will still be the same? I know these two BIM platforms are totally different from each other, which makes me think about your possible results. I am looking forward to you presentation.

https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/revitbentley-architecture-comparison.html

Mengel,

Creating families in Revit is not an easy task. There are a lot of things I want to know about families. I would recommend that you to spend a good time doing this project because as soon as you finish creating families in Revit, and get used to it, you will be able to create more of them even faster. I believe this will be an interesting project. I hope you do not spend a lot of time creating these families, but one thing I know for sure is that you will definitely finish faster than me. It took me a while creating one bookshelf and I would not imagine myself creating another family in Revit. Also, I wonder why did you decide on building a kitchen first? Good luck!!

https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/bim-project-week-4-post.html

Dannemann,

When I think about AI I think about Androids. Please, correct me if I am wrong! I really want to see your presentation. I don’t know how much time you are going to spend researching about this specific topic, but good luck with that. There are a lot of things that I want to know about artificial intelligence in construction. First, how will this affect our careers? I think artificial intelligence (Androids) will hurt us in the future plus they cannot think by themselves, you need someone, such as, an engineer, to set up their configuration. Secondly, do we really need AI in construction? I think civil/architecture engineers are the only engineers that get dirty when they are working outside. Also, the weather is not gorgeous every single day. Are they going to be able to walk through the site, take measurements and get wet? I am just curious about your project. I am looking forward to your presentation.

https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/02/b4-group-c-peter-dannemann.html

Assignment B2 - Group A - Ronald Herazo

B1 – Ronald Herazo

BIM Design Tools and Parametric Modeling

BIM refers to Building Information Modeling, which is a process involving the generation and management of digital representations of physical and functional characteristics of places. Building Information Models are files that can be exchanged or extracted with the purpose of supporting decisions regarding building or other type of structures. Nowadays, BIM software is used by businesses and government agencies who design and construct different types of physical infrastructures, such as, bridges, buildings, tunnels, and some others. The BIM Handbook (Chapter 2) provides an overview of the primary technology that differentiates BIM design applications from earlier generation CAD systems. The concept of BIM has existed since 1970s, but it was originally created in the 80s. However, Building Information Model became popular in the twenty first century.

In Chapter 2, Charles M Eastman highlights that architectural BIM design applications let users mix 3D modeled objects with 2D drawn sections with the purpose of allowing users to determine the level of 3D detailing while still being able to produce complete drawings [1]. These particular objects that are drawn in 2D are not included in BIM enabled applications. Also, Eastman points out that current BIM design applications include services that provide a lot of functional tools. These BIM design applications have a sort of a platform in order to manage the data within a model for different issues; this model is called a BIM environment.

3D modeling has been implemented new features since 1960s. The development of new 3D representations had a lot of problems since engineers at time could not include them in movies, architectural and engineering design, and games. But, in the late 1960s, engineers developed polyhedral forms to the first computer graphics film called Tron. The main idea in this type of representation is to have these initial polyhedral forms composed into an image with a limited set of parameterized and scalable shapes. Therefore, computational functions were created in order to create any types of shapes with variable dimensions. Figure 1 represents the shapes could be created at that time; shapes such as, cylinder, cone, pyramid, sphere, and others.

Figure 1 General Shapes

By this time, engineers had the basic of engineering design: shapes. So, they started to combine the shapes using the operations of spatial union, intersection, and subtraction. These operations are called Boolean Operations. The purpose of these operations is to allow the user to interactively generate difficult shapes such as, buildings and tools (screwdriver). Figure 2 is a clear representation of the improvement in BIM Design. In this chapter, Eastman also explains that building modeling based on 3D solid modeling was first developed in the late 70s.

Figure 2 Building Service Core

The current generation of BIM architectural design tools, which includes Autodesk Revit, Bentley Architecture, and some other software, grew up of the object-based [parametric modeling capacities developed and refined first for mechanical design. For instance, in Parametric Design, a designer first defines an element class which defines some mixture of fixed and parametric geometry. This specific shape varies according to its context. In other words, Eastman clearly states that objects and their faces can be defined using relations involving distances, angles, and rules like attached to, parallel to, and offset from.

Works Cited

Eastman, Charles M. BIM handbook: a guide to building information modeling for owners, managers, designers, engineers and contractors. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2011. Web. 20 Jan. 2017.

Comments:

Mengel,

Chapter 3 seems to be very interesting. There are a lot of stuff that we do not know yet, and it is very important as an engineer to know these little things. As you mentioned in your post, interoperability is a key for any modern-day design. But, this is not it. I like when you highlighted that interoperability is not just a key for buildings but also for any project that uses multiple presences or need more than one application for design. It is very interesting how all the ideas and data gained from multiples companies and construction sectors have helped with the improvement of the interoperability. How do you think this technology can be improved? I do believe that something new with better quality will come. But, do we really need it?

https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/01/blog-post-2-group-b-brandon-mengel-our.html

Raggousis,

I read Mengel’s post and it is interesting how this chapter explains the purpose of interoperability of software. This chapter seems to be very interesting since it discusses the file formats, and the way the data is stored and translated from one software to another. Today, we all use different types of software, and I like when you mentioned in your post that “we are all familiar with these things even if we have only been exposed to PDF files of JPEG files.” This is a very good example of viewing these files in different platforms such as, iOS and Windows. This chapter also indicates different types of ways that we can use interoperability. Can you imagine BIM software in 10 years from now? I do believe that the details in each project will be better.

https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/01/assignment-b2-group-b-maria-raggousis.html

Dannemann,

After reading your post, I believe that BIM is very powerful to make important decisions. You brought up an important point in your post “with the rise of BIM, owners can make much more educated decisions when it comes to field changes as risk management and economic analysis are easily determined from the model.” I think this is the way it should be because sometimes they want something unnecessary and useless. Also, the owner can have a good conversation with the designer or whoever is designing his building. This new implementation allows the owner to visualize how the building’s components work together. Great!

https://ae-410-510-ay16-17.blogspot.com/2017/01/b2-group-c-peter-dannemann.html

Term Project - Robots for Construction

Team Members:
Ronald Herazo
Zhijing Zheng
Chaudhari

Robotics

We are interested in researching how robotics apply in construction purposes. We would like to research how robots can improve construction quality and how this feature can help humans in their performance.

Names Placeholder Post for Labels, Tags

This post creates the first half of the last names of everyone as a label/tag in the class as of 1/4/2017.  I have to add in several posts because it’s limited by Blogger.