Development of Integrative Methodologies for Effective Excavation Progress Monitoring

Excavation is one of the primary projects in the construction industry. Introducing various technologies for full automation of the excavation can be a solution to improve sensing and productivity that are the ongoing issues in this area. This paper covers three aspects of effective excavation progress monitoring that include excavation volume estimation, occlusion area detection, and 5D mapping. The excavation volume estimation component enables estimating the bucket volume and ground excavation volume. To achieve mapping of the hidden or occluded ground areas, integration of proprioceptive and exteroceptive sensing data was adopted. Finally, we proposed the idea of 5D mapping that provides the info of the excavated ground in terms of geometric space and material type/properties using a 3D ground map with LiDAR intensity and a ground resistive index. Through experimental validations with a mini excavator, the accuracy of the two different volume estimation methods was compared. Finally, a reconstructed map for occlusion areas and a 5D map were created using the bucket tip’s trajectory and multiple sensory data with convolutional neural network techniques, respectively. The created 5D map would allow for the provision of extended ground information beyond a normal 3D ground map, which is indispensable to progress monitoring and control of autonomous excavation.