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The Application Scenarios of Smart Construction Objects (SCOs) in

Construction

Chapter · May 2017

DOI: 10.1007/978-981-10-0855-9_86

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Chapter 87
A SCO-Based Tower Crane System
for Prefabrication Construction

Diandian Liu, Weisheng Lu, Yuhan Niu and Hongdi Wang

Abstract Prefabrication construction has been increasingly applied to the con-

struction industry. Automation and intelligentization of construction site and con-
struction objects has become the fore for the development of the prefabrication
construction. In this study, a SCO-based tower crane system, as the core resource
site on the critical path of prefabrication construction, is proposed to make the
cranes more intelligent and efficient. A set of smart units are applied to the tower
cranes and prefabricated components to make them into Smart Construction Objects
(SCOs), enabling the functions of awareness, communicativeness and autonomy.
The smart tower crane could “talk” with prefabrication components through sensors
and real-time wireless connections. A system operation flow is developed for
fetching and placing target components. The SCO-based tower crane system can
provide the operation instruments, real-time traceability of the components, and
necessary warning. The system is being tested in a pilot project, which is delivered
through BIM and prefabrication construction. It is envisaged that the SCO-based
tower crane system could significantly improve the safety performance and oper-
ation efficiency of the tower crane operations in prefabrication construction.

Keywords Prefabrication construction
SCO
Tower crane
Safety

87.1 Background

Prefabrication is hallmark development of the industrialization of the construction

industry. Different from traditional cast in situ method, precast components are
produced and tested in the factory, before they are assembly on-site. Prefabrication
is widely perceived as a superior construction technology to traditional construction
method in aspects such as including the improvement in environmental impacts

D. Liu (&)
W. Lu
Y. Niu
H. Wang

Department of Real Estate and Construction, The University of Hong Kong,
Pok Fu Lam, Hong Kong
e-mail: liudd@connect.hku.hk

© Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017 981

Y. Wu et al. (eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International Symposium
on Advancement of Construction Management and Real Estate,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-0855-9_87

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982 D. Liu et al.

through reduction in waste and dust [1], the increased worker safety through
reduced exposures to hazardous operations [2], and the increment in whole-life
performance and profitability [3].
Due to its merits, prefabrication has been adopted in Hong Kong for more than
two decades, mostly in in public housing projects [1]. In 2002, the precast com-
ponents accounted for approximately 17 % of the total concrete volume used in
public housing projects [4]. The precast elements cover a wide range of con-
struction elements including facades, staircases, parapets, partition walls,
semi-precast slabs and, more recently, volumetric precast bathrooms and kitchens
[2]. The advancement of prefabrication techniques has contributed significantly to a
dense urban environment like Hong Kong, economically and environmentally [1].
However, problems associated with the prefabrication construction are also
reported. For example, high transportation cost has led to that overall prefabrication
construction around 2 % more expensive than using traditional technologies. It
requires more carnage. When working with large amount of on-site prefabrication
work, installation is often complicated especially when working under very con-
gested floor layout at a high altitude [5]. Although innovation in techniques has
improved the prefabrication construction [1], the innovations mainly focus on the
casting technique. It is desired that prefabrication could be improved by continu-
ously developing innovative technologies such as automation and robotics.
To improve the construction by the means of automation has been proposed
since decades ago [6]. Using robots to replace existing labor work and existing
construction machinery is the main trend. There are robots like mobile crane that
are designed for brick-laying and masonry work [7]. Using Contour Crafting
(CC) system provides a way to fabricate a whole piece of hollow concrete structure
on site by automatic computer control [8]. There are also breakthrough technologies
for prefabrication construction. For example, a gantry is augmented with robotic
intelligence to automatically assemble prefabricated component on site [9],
although it is designed for low-rise buildings.
Putting robots onsite as “helpers” for construction work might be a way to drive
the technological development in the construction industry. Alternatively, to aug-
ment the existing on-site construction machinery and equipment with “smartness”
for conducting traditional work might be another way without radical change in
routines. In this study, a framework to develop a smart tower crane system is
proposed to assist the on-site prefabrication construction work. Based on the con-
cept of Smart Construction Objects (SCOs), the tower crane and prefabricated
components in this system are augmented with the ability to sense, communicate
and act autonomously. The remainder of the paper comprises six sections.
Section 87.2 reviews the concept of SCO and defines the properties of SCOs in the
smart tower crane system. Section 87.3 elaborates the rationale for setting up a
digitized 3D site to support the system. Section 87.4 describes three components in
the smart unit. A workflow of the system is introduced in Sect. 87.5. Section 87.6
discusses the prospects and future research areas presented by the smart tower crane
system, and conclusions are drawn in Sect. 87.7.

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87.2 SCO and Smart Crane System

To meet the challenge in construction industry, Smart Construction Object (SCO) is

introduced as a way to embed “intelligence” into construction recourses in order to
assist construction management. A SCO is proposed as a step towards the ubiq-
uitous computing in the construction context [10]. In earlier study of Niu et al. [10],
SCOs are defined as follows:
Construction resources (e.g. machinery, tools, device, materials, components, and even
temporary or permanent structures) that are made “smart” by augmenting them with
sensing, processing and communication abilities so that they have autonomy and aware-
ness, and can interact with the vicinity to enable better decision-making.

The smart tower crane system is one application example of SCOs, where tra-
ditional tower cranes and prefabricated components are augmented into SCOs. The
sensing ability of SCO is addressed by awareness, which enables the prefabricated
components to sense their real-time locations. Besides, by applying the commu-
nicativeness, a connection could be established between prefabricated components
and the smart crane. Through the connection, prefabricated component could
exchange information with the smart crane including the real-time coordinates,
destination coordinates, and other geometric parameters. Based on the information
captured by and transmitted from the smart prefabricated components, the smart
tower crane could fetch and relocate these components with autonomy.

87.3 Smart Unit

To obtain the awareness, communicativeness and autonomy as described for SCOs,

each of the prefabricated component and the crane are augmented with a smart unit.
The core components of the smart unit are the location tracking module, the
microcontroller, and the Bluetooth module.

87.3.1 Location Tracking Module

The awareness to sense real-time locations is achieved by the location tracking

module in the smart Unit. A Global Positioning System (GPS) tracker and an
Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) work complementarily as the location tracking
module for the smart tower crane system.
The GPS has been widely used in navigation and surveying application due to its
capability to provide a 24-h worldwide positioning service at a relatively low cost
[11]. Relying signals from on the satellites, the accuracy of GPS has been made
possible in a 10-m level of change [12]. Although the accuracy is comparatively
high for road transportation positioning, it is still not enough for positioning of

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984 D. Liu et al.

single building component. Thus a more precise positioning system for short dis-
tance is needed to help calibrate the result given by GPS system. Moreover, GPS
may suffer from signal masking and multipath errors in area shielded by dense
buildings or trees [11]. Hong Kong Island is typical city canyon area where only
around 50 % of the test area is receptive of adequate GPS signals in the study of
Lu et al. [11]. Therefore, GPS system alone is not enough for location tracking in
the smart tower crane system.
Not like GPS that relies on satellites for positioning, an IMU is self-contained and
it requires no external motion signals for positioning [11]. The IMU is reliable and
stable while navigating under conditions of external disturbance [13]. The IMU
consists of a gyroscope to sense angular rates, an accelerometer to sense acceleration
and other sensors such as the magnetic sensor so that data from separate sensors could
fuse into a single, optimum estimation [14]. After the acceleration of gravity is
subtracted, the remaining accelerations would then be double integrated over time to
determine the displacement of the IMU relative to a known starting point [15]. Since
location tracking using IMU is based on integration against time of movement, even a
small change of distance can be calculated. Thus IMU could offset the accuracy
problem of GPS. On the other hand, with the increase of tracking time and distance,
the IMU will suffer from drifting problem by integration [11, 14, 16, 17]. The tracked
locations may deviate from the real-time locations over time if IMU is used alone.
Thus IMU is usually used with other sensors or systems, such as the optical navi-
gation sensor [17], for navigation and positioning purpose. Therefore, for the smart
tower crane system, GPS is needed to calibrate the IMU result at regular time interval.

87.3.2 Microcontroller

The microcontroller is vitally important for realizing autonomous control. The

application of microcontroller is widely adopted in autonomous robot control [18,
19]. Likewise, acting like the ‘brain’ in every SCO, the microcontroller centrally
manages the sensors, communicating devices, and the actuators in the Auto-In
system. Data generated from the location tracking module would be compiled and
interpreted by the microcontroller before communication. Besides, in traditional
construction process, the motion of jib, trolley and hoisting rope of the tower crane
are manually controlled by the operator. In the smart crane system, the motions of
these components will be guided by instructions sent from the microcontroller,
which are calculated and provided by the algorithms programmed inside.

87.3.3 Communication Module

Communicativeness of SCOs is achieved by the communication module in the

smart unit. Bluetooth is chosen for the smart tower crane system. Compared to other

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87 A SCO-Based Tower Crane System for Prefabrication Construction 985

wireless communication technologies, Bluetooth is preferred because low-energy

Bluetooth could perform lower power consumption [20]. It usually takes no less
than one month for prefabricated components to be the manufactured, delivered and
installation on-site. In the Hong Kong-Shenzhen cross-board cooperation for pre-
fabrication construction, the transportation of prefabricated components may take
longer time. Most wireless connection modules such as Wi-Fi module may largely
consume the battery before the on-site operation. Comparatively, the low-power
Bluetooth may support the smart prefabricated components for longer duration up
to 6 months. Meanwhile, depending on the power class of the device, the typical
working distance of Bluetooth ranges from 10 to 100 m [11], covering the hoisting
range of the tower crane.
Besides, the Bluetooth wireless module provides a low-cost way for information
exchange among mobile devices and provides connectivity of these devices to the
Internet [21]. To complete the system operation, the smart tower crane needs to be
connected by servers or handheld devices. Therefore, the Bluetooth module is
preferred in the smart tower crane system.

87.4 The Digitized 3D Site

To establish a digitized three dimensional (3D) site with three mutually orthogonal
axes is the first and foremost step for the SCO-based tower crane system. The
purpose of digitizing the site is to assign each location within the site with three a
unique triaxial (x, y, z) coordinate. X-axis and y-axis forms the plane that are
parallel to the ground. Z-axis is parallel to the direction of gravity. Together, x-axis,
y-axis and z-axis form a 3D cubic grid that is large enough to contain the whole site
and buildings to be erected. Therefore, anywhere on site including the temporary
storage area, vehicle parking area, construction area and so on can be located by
corresponding coordinates. Digitizing the whole construction site area is funda-
mental for SCOs to achieve location awareness. The coordinate system serves as the
standard of site location information. After SCOs sense their real-time locations
within the site, the information will be compiled in a (x, y, z) format. When SCOs
need to communicate the location information between each other or update
location information back to database, the location information is also conveyed in
the (x, y, z) format.
The establishment of the digitized 3D site is based on site plans. The z-axis is set
referring to elevation plans while x-axis and y-axis are set on site layout plans. Since
the location tracking and route calculation are based on relative displacements, the
base point (0, 0, 0) can be set at the center or any angle of the cubic grid. The cubic
grid is large enough to contain the irregular-shaped site. Each façade could be
matched with a (x′, y′) value as their destination location value in the designated
installation location. For facades on ground level, the z′ values are set as 0.

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986 D. Liu et al.

For facades on above levels, the z′ values are set according to floor levels in ele-
vation plans. If project has been designed with Building Information Modeling
(BIM) models, the model can be directly matched with the 3D cubic grid so that each
objects in the BIM model carries the matched (x′, y′, z′) value as destination
locations.

87.5 System Operation Flow

As shown in Fig. 87.1, the system block diagram specifically demonstrates the
dynamic interactions among three elements of the SCO-based tower crane system,
including the smart crane, smart prefabricated component and the information
center.
The information center serves as a database to support the system, containing
information of the digitized 3D site as well as information of designated installation
locations for every prefabricated component. The destination location (x′, y′, z′) of
each smart prefabricated component, which is extracted from 3D digitized site from
the information center, will be firstly input into its smart unit during prefabrication

Fig. 87.1 The block diagram of the smart crane tower system

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87 A SCO-Based Tower Crane System for Prefabrication Construction 987

process. Besides, the smart prefabricated component could also carry other infor-
mation such as weight, height, and installation requirements. The database of the
information center is shared by on-site servers and can be accessed by handheld
devices.
When smart prefabricated components have been delivered on site, the smart
crane will be triggered into operation mode by a command from servers in the site
control center, or from handheld devices. A set of smart unit will also be augmented
to the tower crane so that the smart tower crane could communicate with the smart
prefabricated components and act autonomously. When smart prefabricated com-
ponents enter into the temporary storage area, they are configured to the discov-
erable mode. Since each smart component carries a unique ID, the smart crane
could identify each smart component by its ID.
The smart crane will then establish the communicative Bluetooth connection
with smart components. After the smart tower crane validates the ID of the each
component, the component would send back its current location (x0, y0, z0) and
destination location (x′, y′, z′) to the crane. By using the current location (x0, y0, z0)
and the destination location (x′, y′, z′), the crane is enabled to calculate the optimum
route for fetching and relocating the target component by calculating the rotation
degree of the jib, parallel moving distance of the trolley and vertical moving dis-
tance of the hook block.
Basically, there are three steps for the smart crane to reach the targeted com-
ponents. First, the jib of the smart crane will rotate in a 360° plane that is parallel to
the ground until pointing the targeted component. Second, the trolley will move
forward or backward along the jib based on the parallel moving distance calculated.
Finally, the crane will move the hook block up and down by adjusting the hoisting
rope. Similarly, by reversing and repeating the above three steps, the crane could
relocate the target component to the destination location after fetching it. During the
fetching and relocating operation of the smart tower crane, the smart prefabricated
component could sense the replacement of its location though awareness, which is
achieved by the microcontroller and the location tracking module in the smart unit.
The IMU could provide the real-time acceleration and rate of angular change. These
data would then be converted into the 3D coordinate format as the real-time
location (xi, yi, zi) by the microcontroller, which will be calibrated by the GPS
outputs.
Once the real-time location (xi, yi, zi) matches destination location (x′, y′, z′), the
smart prefabricate component would alert the smart tower crane, suggesting that the
component is successfully arriving at the designated installation location.
Afterwards, the smart crane will update current location (xi, yi, zi), which should be
equal to the designated destination location (x′, y′, z′) theoretically, of the smart
prefabricated component to the information center. At this time, the information of
current location (xi, yi, zi) could be regarded as the as-built information of the smart
fabricated component, which is potential for future use for the purpose of main-
tenance and facility management. The full process of the operation could also be
demonstrated through the schematic diagram as Figs. 87.2, 87.3 and 87.4.

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988 D. Liu et al.

Fig. 87.2 Communication establishment

Fig. 87.3 Autonomous installation

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87 A SCO-Based Tower Crane System for Prefabrication Construction 989

Fig. 87.4 Destination confirmation

87.6 Discussion

The smart tower crane system is envisaged to improve the prefabrication con-
struction by autonomous action-taking to free labor from site operations. The
reduction in human involvement is potential to enable better safety control and to
decrease human-centric interventions and possible errors. Besides, the object-
to-object communicativeness presented by the smart tower crane and the smart
prefabricated component lays the foundation towards Internet of Things in the
construction industry.
As the smart tower crane system is being developed and tested in a pilot study in
a prefabrication construction project in Hong Kong, the effectiveness and efficiency
of this system is yet to be demonstrated. The empirical performance of the smart
tower crane will be presented in future study. Besides, more construction objects
including machines, equipment and on-site components are potential be augmented
into SCOs under various circumstances to step towards a panoramic smart con-
struction industry.

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990 D. Liu et al.

87.7 Conclusion

This paper presents the key concepts, technologies, and the framework for devel-
oping smart tower crane system for prefabrication construction. The fundamental
concept underlying this study is the concept of smart construction objects (SCOs),
which are construction objects that are augmented with sensing, communicating
and autonomous abilities. A smart unit is embedded into the traditional tower crane
and prefabricated components to make them into SCOs. To establish a reference
location system, the construction site would be digitized with 3D cubic gridlines so
that each location could be assigned with a unique coordinate. Based on the SCOs
and location referring to the 3D digitized site, the on-site installations could be
preceded autonomously by the smart tower crane system.

Acknowledgements The work is supported by HKU Post Doctor Fellowship (PDF)/Research

Assistant Professor (RAP) Scheme. Project title: BIM-and IoTs-oriented Smart Construction
Objects (SCOs): The Elementary Particles of Future Construction.

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