• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.197-204
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• 2007

Nowadays, the construction industry is suffering from the decrease of labor productivity caused by the lack of skilled workers and the aging labor forces. The hazardous work conditions and safety problems still exist at the construction sites. The earthwork operation is not the exception. The number of skilled earthwork equipment operators has been rapidly reduced and the equipment needs to be operated in dangerous / hazardous work sites. Thus, through the development of intelligent excavating system, Intelligent Excavating System(I.E.S) research team tries to enhance the safety of work environment, productivity, quality, and payability of the earthwork operation. It is also expected that this research contributes to the development of fundamental construction automation technologies and to the creation a new market sector.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.136-145
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• 2009

The objective of the Intelligent Excavation System (IES) is to recognize the work environment and produce work plan and automatically control the excavator through integrating sensor and robot technologies. This paper discusses one of the core technologies of IES development project, development of 3D work environment modeling. 3D laser scanner is used for 3-dimensional mathematical model that can be visualized in virtual space in 3D. This paper describes (1) how the most appropriate 3D imaging system has been chosen; (2) the development of user interface and customization of the s/w to control the scanner for IES project; (3) the development of the mobile station for the scanner; (4) and the algorithm for the automatic registration of laser scan segments for IES project. The development system has been tested on the construction field and lessons learned and future development requirements are suggested.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.145-154
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• 2009

For developing an Automation equipment in construction, it is a key issue to develop 3D modeling technology which can be used for automatically recognizing environmental objects. Recently, for the development of "Intelligent Excavating System(IES), a research developing the real-time 3D terrain modeling technology has been implemented from 2006 in Korea and a stereo vision system is selected as the optimum technology. However, as a result of performance tests implemented in various earth moving environment, the 3D images obtained by stereo vision included considerable noise. Therefore, in this study, for getting rid of the noise which is necessarily generated in stereo image matching, the noise elimination algorithm of stereo-vision images for 3D terrain modeling was developed. The consequence of this study is expected to be applicable in developing an automation equipments which are used in field environment.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.363-375
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• 2013

Today, a shortage of the skilled operator has been intensified gradually and the necessity of an earthwork in extreme environment operators are difficult to access is increasing for the purpose of resource development and new living space creation. For this reason, an effort to develop an unmanned excavation robot for fully automated earthwork system is continuing globally. In Korea, a research consortium called 'Intelligent Excavation System' has been formed since 2006 as a part of Construction Technology Innovation Program of Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs of Korea. Among detailed technologies of the Task Planning System is one of the core technologies of IES, this paper explains research and development process of the Local Area Design Module, which provides informatization unit to create automated excavators' work command information at operation level such as location, range, target, and sequence for excavation work. Designing of Local Area should be considered various influential factors such as excavator's specification, working mechanism, heuristics, and structural stability to create work plan guaranteed safety and effectiveness. For this research, conceptual and detail design of the Local Area is performed for analyzing design element and variable, and quantization method of design specification corresponding with heuristics and structural safety is generated. Finally, module is developed through constructed algorithm and developed module is verified.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.130-141
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• 2011

The intelligent excavating system(IES), the development in South Korea of which has been underway since 2006, aims for the full-scale automation of the excavation process that includes a series of tasks such as movement, excavation and loading. The core elements to ensure the quality and safety of the automated excavation equipment include 3D modeling of terrain that surrounds the excavating robot and the technology for detecting objects accurately(i.e., for detecting the location of nearby loading trucks and humans as well as of obstacles positioned on the movement paths). Therefore the purpose of this research is to ensure the quality and safety of automated excavation detecting the objects surrounding the excavating robot via a 3D laser scanning system. In this paper, an algorithm for estimating the location, height, width, and shape of objects in the 3D-realized terrain that surrounds the location of the excavator was proposed. The performance of the algorithm was verified via tests in an actual earthwork field.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.790-793
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• 2008

Recently, Intelligent Excavating System(IES) for earthwork automation is on progress since the end of 2006 as a part of construction technology innovation projects in Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs. Task Planning System(TPS), one of the detail core technologies of IES, is an optimal work planning system in conditions of effectiveness, safety and economic efficiency by analyzing the work environment data based on earthwork design and work environment recognition technology. For effective earthwork planning, the location of platform must be the most optimal spot for minimization of time, maximization of productivity and reduction of overlapped work spaces and unnecessariness. Besides, the decision of optimal platform location is to be based on the specifications and then is able to be converted with the local area calculation algorithm. This study explains the decision of optimal platform location on the basis of local area from the work space separate process and judges the effectiveness.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute Of Construction Engineering and Management
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.364-367
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• 2008

Earthwork is very equipment-intensive task and researches related to automated excavation have been conducted. There is an issue to secure the safety for an automated excavating system. Therefore, this paper focuses on how to improve safety for semi- or fully-automated backhoe excavation. The primary objective of this research is to develop object detection algorithm for automated safety system in excavation work. In order to satisfy the research objective, a diverse sensing technologies are investigated and analysed in terms of functions, durability, and reliability and verified its performance by several tests. The authors developed the objects detecting algorithm for user interface program using laser sensor. The results of this study would be the basis for developing the automated object detection system.