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Ulyxes: an open source project for automation in engineering surveying
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Abstract
Ulyxes is an open source project to drive robotic total stations as well as other sensors, collect their measurements in database and finally publish the results for authorized users on the web. On special requests the results are also presented with web based maps in the background. This project is like an instant coffee: three in one (coffee, sugar and milk). The coffee and the strongest part is the research and coding. The sugar is the application of the program in industrial environment and the milk on the top is the educational usage. The software development started in 2008 connected to a monitoring task in the Hungarian Nuclear Power Plant. Since then the development has been extended from total stations to different positioning capable sensors. In 2012 the development of a new Python based object oriented framework started. The code is based on the results of some other open source projects, Python, PySerial, GNUGama, SQLite, OpenCV, etc. After connecting to the international Geo4All network in 2014, Ulyxes became a project of our Geo4All Lab. The project has its own home page (http://www.agt.bme.hu/ulyxes) and the source code is available on the GitHub portal (https://github.com/zsiki/ulyxes). The code is maintained by the colleagues at the Department of Geodesy and Surveying at the Budapest University of Technology, volunteers from all over the World are welcome. BSc and MSc students are also involved in the development and testing. More theses were connected to this project in the recent five years. In the curriculum of an MSc subject called Surveying Automation, Ulyxes is used to demonstrate automatized tasks in engineering surveying. The system has been applied for several projects during the last 10+ years. Typical applications are the load tests of bridges and other engineering structures and on the other hand Ulyxes can be used to monitor the movements of buildings in the nearby of constructional works, like metro stations, underground garage and other buildings as well. Raspberry Pi small, single board computers are used with Raspbian operating system during on-site works. The source code is divided into three parts. The first one is the Ulyxes API which is the core of the system. The second one, Ulyxes Apps is a collection of applications based upon the API. Some of them were developed by our students. The third part is the server side scripts to publish observation results through the Internet. Moreover it is also planned to implement SOS standard using IstSOS. Our Geo4All Lab maintains another open source software, called GeoEasy to process observation data in engineering and land surveying. A closer cooperation is also planned between our two open source projects. In this paper the most important features of Ulyxes will be presented with examples, an actual monitoring project in Budapest and test loads of bridges and overpasses.
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Modern geotechnical monitoring is based on a variety of surface-based and integrated sensors. This article discusses the potential but also the limitations of total stations and laser scanners in monitoring of civil infrastructure and natural phenomena. We report about our experiences gained in long-term monitoring projects and discuss the impact of the setup location, the signal travel path, and the target. Although modern instruments are capable of measurements with accuracies of a few millimetres or better, neglecting error sources like temperature dependence of the tilt sensor, orientation of the used prism, obstructions and reflections of the measurement beam, and atmospheric refraction can easily cause errors of several millimetres or even centimetres.
A tunnel has been under construction for the Lisbon Metro network on the muddy bed of river Tagus. An incident during the jet-grouting for the muddy soil treatment led to flooding of a specific sector of the tunnel and to the need for repair works. Consequently, a decision has been made to monitor with a short time resolution the movements of that sector before, during and after reparation works. This includes the period in which the tunnel will be in use for its regular operation, with commuters using the subway. Given these general conditions with severe inter-visibility limitations, as well as the cost restraints, an automatic monitoring system has been designed and put in place, resorting to four LEICA TC2003 motorised total stations and to the available commercial software, LEICA GeoMoS. The computational procedure of the mentioned software implies a network configuration, in which every total station set up needs a cluster of control points associated with that particular setup in order to perform a space resection. However, it is often difficult to find stable points inside a tunnel under monitoring let alone during repair works. Therefore, to overcome this difficulty, adjustment software - EpochSuite – has been integrated into the monitoring system. Since it runs after the collection of data, the adjustment software makes it possible to perform a more robust and accurate computation of displacement vectors of signalised object points, which represent the tunnel under study. EpochSuite uses a database management approach that is particularly useful in handling many monitoring epochs and uses automatic outlier detection tools. This paper reports on the network configuration, the instrumental setup and the software framework in which the automatic monitoring system actually operates.
The development of Free Software is a well established and successful phenomenon which could hardly exist without the Internet, where groups of programmers scattered all around the world are developing software. The idea of Free Software is highly attractive to talented creative students and can stimulate and support their profesional activities. The GNU GaMa [4] for adjusting of geodetic networks, with input data described in XML, is given here as a concrete example. Free Software [3] (or Open Source) projects need not be limited to software development but can generally cover any professional project based on free information exchange; a suggested example is the planned collection of model geodetic networks described in XML.
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