Vandel Solar Park and Energi Innovation needed to mark out 115,000 points for the positions of the solar panel piles. The TinySurveyor robot was able to use the already existing data and mark all the points needed much faster than traditional set-out methods.
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The TinySurveyor robot is the ideal instrument for airport operators and contractors who are looking to reduce maintenance downtime, increase the quality of runway and taxi markings and deliver a safer work environment for airport grounds staff.
AME Surveys started using the TinySurveyor for road works but soon applied the technology to solar farm stake-out as well. The upside for them has definitely been the speed of production as well as the reliabilityof the robot and the accuracy of the markings.
“(…) it’s the reliability of the result as well as the speed at which you can do it.”
Central Darling Shire Council use the TinySurveyor to mark out center lines and offset lines for road works, sports field marking and airstrip maintenance. The robot increases safety for surveyors, reduces cost and saves time on large scale road projects.
CPB Contractors have used the TinySurveyor for a freeway upgrade project. They are very pleased with the speed, accuracy, repeatability and safety increase that the robot provides.
“The TinySurveyor gets our surveyors out of the firing line and just the speed it is able to work at is impressive.”
Colas used the TinySurveyor to set out pre-markings at Port of Calais. The TinySurveyor was used to pre-mark asphalt coating strips as well as horizontal signage structures. Port of Calais is the second largest passenger port in Europe and has been undergoing a vast extension since 2015.
The TinySurveyor was used for pre-marking a new runway at Brisbane Airport, Australia. The surveying robot was used to pre-mark 50km of lines which was completed in five days. Paul Coughlan, Head of Infrastructure Development, stated,
“What would have taken five weeks, this little robot has done in one week.”
Watch the interview video to see how the surveyors benefited from the robot.
Aarsleff is a leading Danish entrepreneur working within road, buildings, rails and harbor construction. For a harbor construction project in Denmark, several thousand points needed to be staked out. The sandy ground was no problem for the TinySurveyor and 250 points per hour were put down.
The shire is responsible for looking after a range of services from the library, pool and home care through to roads, recycling and beach maintenance. The TinySurveyor has allowed the survey team to dramatically reduce their travel costs as well as completing line marking tasks in a matter of days rather than weeks.
Fulton Hogan’s survey department added new technology in the form of autonomous line marking to their toolbox, thereby increasing their productivity and efficiency. The TinySurveyor also allowed the surveyor to be put out of harm’s way clear from any live operating machines.
Exhibitions often require thousands of points to be staked out in order for organizers to accurately mark the booths. One employee and the TinySurveyor were able to stake out 250 points per hour.
For a large-scale highway upgrade project, the TinySurveyor dramatically reduced time and costs to meet project critical deadlines. The TinySurveyor was also used to mark out other types of works like pedestrian paths and safety barriers which allowed the surveyors to do more project critical tasks.
See how our customer Sir Lines-A-Lot use the TinySurveyor. Sir Lines-A-Lot is a dedicated parking lot striping and pavement marking company serving both commercial and government customers throughout Northern New England, USA. They particularly use the TinySurveyor for airport runways and taxiways.
Initially, the TinySurveyor was only supposed to layout the edges of the asphalt layers during highway construction. However, as the Spotland crew got more familiar with the robot, they also saw the opportunity for staking out all the poles for the crash barriers and the position of the concrete crash barrier.
Cumbersome tasks like line marking and barrier set-outs are now completed quicker and more accurately. Less traffic control is needed to complete tasks which is a huge cost saving and reduces public disruption. Renting the TinySurveyor out to other surveying companies has also added a new revenue stream to the company.
WJ Road marking specialists, United Kingdom
WJ in the UK have added robotic road pre-marking to their service portfolio. They specialize in permanent and temporary road markings and now offer road pre-marking to several customers in the UK undertaking large road construction projects.
In their experience, the robot marks 30 km per shift, compared to 6 km per shift for human workers. In addition to more efficient operations, the long-range remote control and tablet solution allow their workers to control the pre-marking robot from a safe location during road construction projects, saving planning time, safety measures and closed traffic lanes.
For more information about WJ, visit wj.uk.
TinyPreMarker was used for setting out pre-markings in a £600m UK highways upgrade project. The pre-marking robot ensured increased productivity, greater accuracy of road markings, a reduced margin for human error and increased safety on the job. See how the engineers and operators used the robot and read about their experiences in this report.
Sune Larsen, Land Surveyor, Horsens, Denmark
Sune Larsen from Larsens Landmåler Service was one of the first users of the TinySurveyor. He has continuously expanded his business with the robot as new use cases frequently come up. He started by using the robot for as-built surveys of newly paved asphalt. In these cases, the robot increased his work speed by a factor of three. He quickly realised that the robot was also useful for a number of premarking tasks, and he began using it to premark road markings and stake out road work. He has recently developed a working method that allows him to use the robot for premarking/layout on smaller roads. Sune Larsen has bought a second robot due to high workload. Sune Larsen says: “I often reduce the time used by a factor of two to three. The asphalt providers are very satisfied, as they can get on with paving the next layer of asphalt without much delay”.
Geopartner is using TinySurveyor to mark photovoltaic/solar cell parks. With thousands of points needing to be staked out, the robot increases the work speed of the land surveyor by a factor of ten.
Geopartner has also used the robot for as-built surveys and found the precision to be very high. Bjarne Juul, CTO of Geopartner, says: “The precision of the robot, when used for as-built surveys, is comparable to that of humans”.
Ronan Lahart, Head of Marking, RMS, Ireland
RMS is the first Irish company to use the TinyPreMarker. RMS is responsible for the road markings on very long stretches of new motorways in Ireland. They bought the TinyPreMarker in March 2017, and have been using it almost on a daily basis since. They find it very easy to use, and satisfaction concerning the reliability and precision of the TinyPreMarker is high.
Tim Seeber, Chartered Land Surveyor, Kolitzheim, Germany
Belectric is one of the world’s leading firms when it comes to setting up photovoltaic parks. Belectric has projects around the globe. When Belectric discovered the TinySurveyor robot they saw a significant potential for saving time and money. As it turned out, the robot is five to ten times faster than a human at setting out the points for the solar cell foundations.
