The construction industry faces a variety of challenges, including the shortage of skilled workers and productivity. HP and Trimble can address these challenges with an integration of HP SitePrint and the recently introduced Trimble Ri total station. HP SitePrint is an autonomous robotic solution that uses a total station for positioning and precisely prints construction site layouts onto the floor, such as print lines, arcs and text (e.g., partitions with dimensions and text annotations). HP SitePrint can print digital layouts on a variety of surfaces, including concrete, tarmac, plywood, vinyl and epoxy. Trimble Ri is Trimble’s latest total station, that provides self-calibration to ensure that measurements made in a single face are accurate.
Integration of the Trimble Ri robotic total station and HP SitePrint
The new integrated solution focuses on transforming the layout process for indoor construction projects, replacing the current layout process which is labor intensive and done by specialists, using a total station to guide a user equipped with a prism to a selected layout point. Once over the point, the user manually marks the layout points on the surface. Now, with the integration of the Trimble Ri robotic total station and HP SitePrint, this process is automated, so that users will be able to feed the robot with a layout plan and initiate an autonomous layout printing process. The total station will precisely guide and constantly monitor the robot’s position. The physical marking is done in real time while the robot is moving.
Trimble and HP’s integrated solution can deliver an autonomous layout workflow that empowers efficiency and productivity on the job while delivering layouts faster than traditional methods. According to HP tests in real customer projects, the integrated solution can improve productivity by as much as ten times versus the manual process. Augmenting the contractors’ work, SitePrint can avoid obstacles and print lines and complex objects with pinpoint accuracy and consistent repeatability. In addition, text printing capabilities bring additional data from the digital model to the construction site to prevent errors.
Achieving autonomous, high-accuracy indoor layout work
During a layout mission, the Trimble Ri constantly communicates with the SitePrint robot to provide the absolute positioning required for the printing process. Equipped with automatic level detection, self-calibration, and Trimble VISION technology for advanced tracking, the Trimble Ri enables the HP SitePrint robot to achieve autonomous, high-accuracy indoor layout work.
The automatic level detection and self-calibration of the Trimble Ri improves the efficiency of the initial setup. As with current layout workflows, a prism is used to identify the precise position. Instead of being mounted on a rod, the prism is mounted on the SitePrint robot providing accurate positioning of the printer head. The Ri total station provides absolute positioning so changes in object location are not impacting the accuracy.
