• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.55-63
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• 2020

Earthwork automation has emerged as a promising technology in the construction industry, and the application of earthwork automation technology is starting from the acquisition and processing of point cloud data of the site. Point cloud data has more than a million data due to vast extent of the construction site, and the processing time of the original point cloud data is critical because it takes tens or hundreds of hours to generate a Digital Terrain Model (DTM), and enhancement of the processing time can largely impact on the efficiency of the modeling. Currently, a benchmark program (BP) is actively used for the purpose of both point cloud data processing and BIM design as an integrated program in Korea, however, there are some aspects to be modified and refined. This study modified the BP, and developed an updated program by adopting a compile-based development environment, newly designed UI/UX, and OpenGL while maintaining existing PCD processing functions, and expended compatibility of the PCD file formats. We conducted a comparative test in terms of loading speed with different number of point cloud data, and the results showed that 92 to 99% performance increase was found in the developed program. This program can be used as a foundation for the development of a program that reduces the gap between design and construction by integrating PCD and earthwork BIM functions in the future.

• Journal of Construction Engineering and Project Management
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.11-18
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• 2017

The cycle time of construction equipment for earthwork operations has a significant impact on project productivity. Elements that directly impact a haul vehicle's cycle time must be identified in order to accurately quantify the haul cycle time and implement strategies to decrease it. The objective of this research is to scientifically identify and quantify variables that have a significant impact on the cycle time of a dump truck used for earthwork. Real-time location data collected by GPS devices deployed in an active earthwork moving construction site was analyzed using statistical regression. External data including environmental components and haul road conditions were also collected periodically throughout the study duration. Several statistical analyses including a variance analysis and regression analysis were completed on the dump truck location data. Collected data was categorized by stage of the dump truck cycle. Results indicate that a dump truck's enter idle time, exit idle time, moving speed and driver visibility can significantly impact the dump truck cycle time. The contribution of this research is the identification and analysis of statistically significant correlations of variables within the cycle time.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.32 no.3D
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• pp.259-267
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• 2012

The development of construction automation systems is proposed as a potent solution to the difficulties encountered by the construction industry and the preparation for the rapidly changing construction environment. A research concerning an intelligent excavation system has taken place since 2006. The intelligent excavation system has several functions for environment sensing, 3D site modeling, work planning, work path generation, unmaned control, and information management. This paper presents a space information model and a work path simulator for work planning and work path generation which is one of key technologies required to apply the earthwork system to the real world. A data structure for an earthwork site is suggested. It overcomes the limitations of previous data structures such as Quadtree and Octree. The work path simulator can generate an effective work path with considering information on work environment, equipment and operator's heuristic. The work path generated by the simulator is compared with that suggested by human operators.

• Journal of KIBIM
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.24-32
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• 2018

A construction machine guidance system is an assistance system that helps construction equipment operators dig grounds during excavation work at a construction site. This system has long been applied in the overseas countries of the United States, Japan and Europe. However, the system has not been paid much attention in Korea. The objective of this paper is to present a business model for adopting construction machine guidance systems in Korea and evaluate the effectiveness of applying the system to excavation work. The business model in this study shows a new process of applying construction machine guidance system, business stakeholders and revenues, and suggests the benefits to the business stakeholders. A field test of the construction machine guidance system proves that the system can be applied as a tool that can improve the productivity of excavation work. This productivity improvement consequently demonstrates that the business model in this study is a prospective challenge in improving the effectiveness of excavation work at the construction site.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.125-135
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• 2019

In recent years, the digital transformation age represented by the "Fourth Industrial Revolution", which is a universalization of digitalization across all industries, has become a reality. In the construction sector in 2018, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport established the Smart Construction 2025 vision and established the 'Smart Construction Technology Roadmap' aiming to complete construction automation by 2030. Especially, in the construction stage, field monitoring technology using drones is needed to support construction equipment automation and on-site control, and a 3D geospatial information model can be utilized as a base tool for this. The purpose of this study is to investigate the factors affecting earthworks work in order to manage changes in site conditions and improve communication between managers and workers in the earthworks plan, which has a considerable part in terms of construction time and cost as a single type of work. Based on this, field management procedures and applications were developed.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.689-699
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• 2022

Recently, high productivity capabilities have been improved due to the application of advanced technologies in various industries, but in the construction industry, productivity improvements have been relatively low. Research on advanced technology for the construction industry is being conducted quickly to overcome the current low productivity. Among advanced technologies, 3D scan technology is widely used for creating 3D digital terrain models at construction sites. In particular, the 3D digital terrain model provides basic data for construction automation processes, such as earthwork machine guidance and control. The quality of the 3D digital terrain model has a lot of influence not only on the performance and acquisition environment of the 3D scanner, but also on the denoising, registration and merging process, which is a preprocessing process for creating a 3D digital terrain model after acquiring terrain scan data. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the terrain scan data processing performance. This study seeks to solve the problem of density inhomogeneity in terrain scan data that arises during the pre-processing step. The study suggests a 'pixel-based point cloud comparison algorithm' and verifies the performance of the algorithm using terrain scan data obtained at an actual earthwork site.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.15-20
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• 2019

A large amount of site investigation data is essential to obtain reliable design value. However, site investigations are generally insufficient due to economic problems. It is important to estimate the ground profile information in unboring region for accurate earthwork-volume prediction, and such ground profile information can be estimated by using the geo-statistical approach. Furthermore, the ground profile information in unboring region can be estimated by training a model via machine learning technique such as artificial neural network. In this paper, artificial neural network-based model estimated the ground profile information in unboring region, and this results were compared with that of ordinary kriging technique, which is referred to the geo-statistical approach. Accordingly, a total of 84 ground profile information in an actual bridge environment was split into 75 training and 9 test databases. The observed ground profile information of the test database was compared with those of the ordinary kriging technique and artificial neural network.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.1609-1623
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• 2014

A number of studies have been conducted recently regarding the development of automation systems for the construction sector. Much of this attention has focused on earthwork because it is highly dependent on construction machines and is regarded as being basic for the construction of buildings and civil works. For example, technologies are being developed in order to enable earthwork planning based on construction site models that are constructed by automatic systems and to enable construction equipment to perform the work based on the plan and the environment. There are many problems that need to be solved in order to enable the use of automatic earthwork systems in construction sites. For example, technologies are needed for enabling collaborations between similar and different kinds of construction equipment. This study aims to develop a construction system that imitates collaborative systems and decision-making methods that are used by humans. The proposed system relies on the multi-agent concept from the field of artificial intelligence. In order to develop a multi-agent-based system, configurations and functions are proposed for the agents and a framework for collaboration and arbitration between agents is presented. Furthermore, methods are introduced for preventing duplicate work and minimizing interference effects during the collaboration process. Methods are also presented for performing advance planning for the excavators and compactors that are involved in the construction. The current study suggests a theoretical framework and evaluates the results using virtual simulations. However, in the future, an empirical study will be conducted in order to apply these concepts to actual construction sites through the development of a physical system.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.1063-1076
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• 2017

To improve the productivity of the earthwork, a fleet management system for construction equipment was suggested in previous studies. But there were some gaps between theory and practice. To overcome this problem, some opinions are gathered form experts and field engineers and four improvements have been proposed and reflected in the system. First, the previous system consists of one hardware module, so it is hard to install it at a control office and construction equipment at the same time. The server module for the office and the mobile module for construction equipment are separately developed. Second, the transportation algorithm that is used in the previous system can generate shortest paths for the earthwork distribution, but embankment areas are not gathered. This situation leads to a decrease in compaction productivity. A modified algorithm for earthwork distribution is suggested. Third, the automated coordinate transformation is performed to show the position of construction equipment on the 3D terrain in real-time. Fourth, construction equipment groups should be formed in the initial stage of earthwork and the number of equipment of each groups should be changed by operation status and site environment. But this functions did not work properly in the previous system. This problem is corrected in the proposed system. The improvements can make the proposed system much more realistic one and can leads to an increase in the productivity of earthwork operations.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.343-346
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• 2007

Recent advances in automation and robotic technologies in the manufacturing industry suggest that the greater level of automation may be extremely beneficial for the construction industry. However, only some of the high-technology advances may be applied to the construction industry due to the fast-changing construction environment in which work locations are constantly changing and material, equipment, and workers are always moving. The earthwork operation for site development is a good candidate for applying automation technology, because it is a very repetitive and tedious task and needs lots of construction equipment. This paper presents the model of a construction environment and a moving plan for an automated earthwork system, which can produce an effective moving path of an excavator platform with an Octree model. To generate the moving path, the know-how of skilled operators and construction managers is added in the proposed model.