Identification of workstations in earthwork operations from vehicle GPS data

The paper proposes a methodology for the identification of workstations in earthwork operations based on GPS traces from construction vehicles. The model incorporates relevant information extracted from the GPS data to infer locations of different workstations as probability distributions over the environment. Monitoring of workstation locations may support map inference for generating and continuously updating the layout and road network topology of the construction environment. A case study is conducted at a complex earthwork site in Sweden. The workstation identification methodology is used to infer the locations of loading stations based on vehicle speeds and interactions between vehicles, and the locations of dumping stations based on vehicle turning patterns. The results show that the proposed method is able to identify workstations in the earthwork environment efficiently and in sufficient detail.