Self-contained automated construction deposition system

This article presents a novel autonomous system concept for automated construction of houses and other buildings via deposition of concrete and similar materials. The overall system consists of a novel cable-suspended mobility subsystem (a selfcontained extension of the RoboCrane), a deposition nozzle subsystem, a metrology subsystem, and a material supply subsystem. This article focuses mainly on the kinematics and statics analysis for control of the self-contained cable-suspended mobility subsystem. We also present alternate design concepts for the mobility system. The purpose of the Cartesian metrology system is to provide an outer-loop controller to provide the required Cartesian pose motions despite uncertainties and umnodeled effects such as cable stretch, wear, and flexibility, plus wind loads. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.