The construction industry is a key sector in Germany. On the other hand, the public perceives the sector as noise pollution, causing detours and traffic jams. Various large-scale projects, in which costs are exploded or the construction period is not planned, contribute to a predominantly negative picture. By eliminating the deficits in planning and preparation, construction costs can be reduced and the schedule can be increased. The planning of the building site is an essential factor of job preparation. It is used to select, dimension and determine all necessary elements necessary for the construction of the building and to be removed at the end of the building. Although there are already some solutions to improve this activity, construction site objects are still being forgotten, misplaced selected, or placed in an incorrect position. The quality and speed of planning is a problem. A frequent 2D planning and many involved parties make this more difficult.
The main goal of this work was to improve the planning of the construction site by designing a multi-user system with virtual reality support. In this way, several participants in different functional areas can participate in the planning process at the same time and immediately view and check the planning results in real-time through the representation with Virtual Reality. The system complements important functions for collision and work area control as well as the integration of planning notes. With such planning systems, more effective planning is possible. The spatial representation helps all parties quickly to achieve a high degree of planning understanding and thus speeds up coordination processes. It was also important to develop suitable interaction concepts, which enable several planners to operate the system in a user-friendly manner.
The designed system consists of a subsystem for 2D planning as well as one for 3D visualization. For 2D planning, a monitor represents the layout and the multi-touch technology allows multiple users to input at the same time. A planning software was developed, which organizes the objects in a desired library and places them in a suitable place. When positioning an element, the object data are passed on to a 3D monitor by means of an interface to a VR software for 3D display. In order to interact with the 3D environment, a 3D mouse is to be used. In addition, the concept was expanded with functions for planning support in order to counteract oblivion of objects, to achieve the appropriate position determination and to take account of the collision and range analysis.
In order to be able to evaluate the planned planning system, it was implemented and a demonstrator was developed. In this context, the 2D planning software and the interface to the VR visualization software were also developed and the required functions for the planning support were integrated. Through the user study the planning system was compared with a reference system.
The evaluation showed that the research hypotheses could be fulfilled: Statistical tests showed a significant difference to the reference system. The hypothesis tests show that the planning time is significantly reduced and the planning quality is significantly increased. The latter is certainly also due to the integration of functions for collision and range-wide analysis of the machines. It has also been shown that the planning system makes it easier to choose the right element, but also to find the right position for it. Furthermore, the evaluation with the reference system shows that the procedure for selecting and placing a suitable element is different. In the reference system with paper, this was predominantly achieved by discussion, while the planning system tried different variants. Nevertheless, the frequency of communication with the planning system was significantly higher.
The designed planning system for construction site facility
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The construction industry is a key sector in Germany. On the other hand, the public perceives the sector as noise pollution, causing detours and traffic jams. Various large-scale projects, in which costs are exploded or the construction period is not planned, contribute to a predominantly negative picture. By eliminating the deficits in planning and preparation, construction costs can be reduced and the schedule can be increased. The planning of the building site is an essential factor of job pr...
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