On the Bar Installation Order for the Automated Fabrication of Rebar Cages

Robotics automation is a promising solution for the fabrication of structures made out of reinforced concrete. The reinforcement is often installed directly in the form and barby-bar. Using bigger pre-fabricated units (cages) may be beneficial for saving construction time and better labor safety. In this paper, we focus on the problem of automating the generation of a plan for the installation of rebars, given the digital twin of a desired reinforcement cage design, and of its basic components. More specifically, the plan describes the assembling order for the rebars such that (i) it is possible to fabricate the reinforcement cage by the robots, and (ii) the end product is the final reinforcement cage, ready for installation in the form for the concrete structure. In this paper, we propose an algorithm to automatically compute a feasible installation order for a generic rebar cage. The feasibility of the generated order is also case studied and simulated on a simplified rebar cage under the given assumptions.