“Automation is developing apace across all industries with the aim of increasing safety, saving time and reducing or eliminating human error.”
Garry MacPhail, Geospatial Division Manager, Position Partners, Australia
The robot is controlled by a high-precision GPS – a network RTK corrected GNSS
receiver – that outputs a position with an accuracy of 1-2cm. The user’s GPS
continuously provides the robot with its updated position by use of an NMEA
formatted signal.
For the TinySurveyor, when conducting as-constructed surveys, height has to be measured with far
greater accuracy than is possible with a high-precision GPS. To enable this, a
prism is mounted below the robot’s GPS antenna. The prism is used
in collaboration with a total station to allow the user to measure height to within a
few millimetres.
The robot navigates to horizontal positions by data from the GPS unit. But it
comes to a full stop for a few seconds at each coordinate to allow for an accurate
measurement with the total station. Depending on the equipment, the user can
choose to manually activate the total station when the robot is at a full stop or the
user can program the total station to automatically measure whenever it detects
that the robot is at a full stop. In some cases, it is also possible to let the robot
drive continuously while it steadily collects data with the total station.
The different robot types are optimized for different tasks. For example, the TinyPreMarker provides settings often used in pre-marking tasks. A built-in setting for parking lot pre-marking allows the robot to collect three coordinates in the field and indicate the angle and the number of rows and columns in the robot’s settings. The robot also has built-in support for the marking of lines and arcs. Once again, the user can collect two coordinates for a line or three coordinates for an arc and the robot will subsequently pre-mark these elements.
