Rapid Human-Assisted Creation of Bounding Models for Obstacle Avoidance in Construction

State-of-the-art construction equipment control technology creates the opportunity to implement automated and semi-automated object avoidance for improved safety and efficiency during operation; however, methods for constructing models of local objects or volumes in real-time are required. A practical, interactive method for doing so is described here. The method: (1) exploits a human operator’s ability to quickly recognize significant objects or clusters of objects in a scene, (2) exploits the operator’s ability to acquire sparse range point clouds of the objects quickly, and then (3) renders models, such as planes, boxes, and generalized convex hulls, to be displayed graphically as visual feedback during equipment operation and/or for making proximity calculations in an obstacle detection system. Experimental results indicate that bounding models can be created rapidly and with sufficient accuracy for obstacle avoidance with the aid of human intelligence and that human-assisted modeling can be beneficial for real-time construction equipment control.