A comparative study on the use of laser scanners for construction quality control and progress monitoring purposes

Abstract

Laser scanning is an emerging technology used on construction sites for defect detection and progress monitoring. Most previous studies in this domain use data from a single scanner while discussing various data collection, processing and accuracy analysis strategies. With the purpose of comparing the technical characteristics of two scanners and identifying the challenges of using them on construction sites, we conducted a case study on indoor laser-scanning of one floor of a five-storey commercial building in Pittsburgh/PA/USA during its construction. The two scanners used in this study adopt two different positioning techniques: pulsed-time-of-flight (obtaining the distance to an object by timing the round-trip traveling-time of the laser) and amplitude-modulated-continuous-wave (comparing the phases of emitted and received signals for indirect measurements of laser traveling time). For each tested scanner, we highlight its unique advantages and technical challenges, as well as relevant technical trade-offs regarding their utilization on a construction-site for quality control and progress monitoring purposes.