GPS navigation and guidance systems for construction industry

Publisher Summary New applications for the use of GPS have emerged especially in construction industry in recent years. The applications include navigation of trucks in fleet management, the guidance of construction machines to precise surveying, setting out, and monitoring of engineering structures. The GPS can be employed in many different modes where the suitable method is selected depending on the accuracy requirements for position determination. Most of these applications require the possibility for continuous position determination in realtime. If this is the case, modern realtime kinematic GPS (RTK-GPS) can be employed. The use of these modern surveying and positioning techniques facilitates the development of new machinery and system processes in construction industry. Especially for the guidance of construction machines, systems have been developed to increase the productivity of construction works. Commercial systems are available for the guidance of graders, dozers, and caterpillars. The systems use 3D surveying systems for position determination mostly in combination with other sensors. This chapter outlines the common features of modem 3D machine guidance systems based on RTK-GPS.