Accurate heavy equipment motion planning considering local and global constraints

Planning the motion of heavy equipment (e.g. cranes, concrete pumps) is a major issue in construction projects, where detailed and accurate planning benefits the safety and productivity of operation. The proposed approach in this paper is directed towards automatically generating an accurate motion plan in space and time for construction equipment by: (1) Investigating kinodynamic motion planning algorithms to generate feasible paths with respect to all considered constraints; (2) Extending the efficiency of motion planning under complex global or geometrical constraints that represent static and dynamic obstacles found in the construction site; (3) Considering local constraints that are related to the stability of the equipment itself. Local constraints include engineering constraints and rules of actions (e.g. workloads for cranes) in addition to kinematic and dynamic constraints of the equipment; and (4) Utilizing 3D animation software to visualize the results interactively.