Augmented Reality for high precision fabrication of Glued Laminated Timber beams

Abstract

In recent years, the utilization of Augmented-Reality (AR) within the construction industry has increased. However, high-precision applications such as glulam beam fabrication requires tolerances of less than 2 mm, which is smaller than what current AR workflows can offer. This research investigates the use of QR-Code Markers on glulam beams to encode additional positional data in the environment to better interpolate between the physical space, the glulam beam, and the headset. The objective is to understand the effects of Marker placement, size, and frequency on the accuracy of AR projection for glulam fabrication. This paper describes the AR workflow, the effects of Markers, and the framework the Twinbuild software for drift correction in large-scale AR applications. The method can achieve an average tolerance as low as 0.97 mm when Markers are placed in 1.25 ft. increments along the beam edge. The research demonstrates the viability of AR for high-precision fabrication applications.