Development of a Manually Operated Mobile Robot That Prints Construction Site Layouts

Chalk lines are used to print layouts in construction sites to indicate the location of attaching or cutting objects; printing depends on the skills of workers and is suitable for small-scale work. Moreover, this type of work requires a precise measurement process, which is time-consuming, to avoid errors. Thus, discrepancies between blueprints and construction site layouts can occur if construction plans and management are not uniformly aligned. To improve the traditional floor-layout-printing technique on construction sites, this study introduces a manually operated mecanum-wheeled mobile robot in the preliminary stage, i.e., before the development of a full-fledged automated system. This manually operated robot helps determine the technologies required for robotic automation. In the development process, layout-printing technology is classified into a marking toolkit, control system that can be manually operated, and mobile driver. To improve layout-printing quality, this study adopted a mecanum-wheeled design to improve mobility. In this study, applied tests are required to consider the site environment for automatically marking floor layout prints. To determine the applicability of the developed technology, this study conducted a field applicability experiment with a pen-type marking module and laser-type toolkit. The experiment confirmed that layout printing based on environmental changes on the construction site can be manually performed using the mobile robot system. To automatically mark floor-layout-printing work, it is necessary to consider the floor characteristics on the construction site. In addition, this experiment shows that the newly applied laser toolkit technology can be applied to layout printing within 12 mm from the floor. To apply this mechanism to a mobile robot that can automate layout printing, it is necessary to technically enhance the optimization of marking quality, e.g., floor separation distance and marking thickness.