This study reports an autonomous fine dust source tracking system of a water spray robot for high-rise building demolition. The core function of this system is performing a self-controlled fine dust tracking of the endpoint of the excavator, which is the fine dust generation point. The water spray robot has a lift with a parallelogram-shaped linkage to lift the water spray drum to 10 m from the ground. The sensor network system is connected to the robot and the excavator to calculate the relative position of the water spray drum and excavator endpoint using forward kinematics. RTK-GPS is attached to the robot and the excavator to calculate the relative distance. By sensor network, forward kinematics, and RTK-GPS, the water spray robot can autonomously track fine dust generation point and spray water to the endpoint of the excavator. The experiment was conducted to confirm the accuracy of kinematics calculation and tracking performance of the robot. The first experiment showed that the calculation result of forward kinematics was accurate enough to fulfill tracking operations. The second experiment showed that the tracking accuracy was precise enough, meaning that the robot could autonomously track fine dust generation point.

Water spraying work to prevent the dust from scattering during building dismantling operation has usually been done manually. Since it is very risky and often causes fatal accidents due to unexpected collapse, a few countries have adopted mechanical water spaying machines. However, these machines are still operated by human laborer, specifically in orienting the spraying direction, which induces low dust suppression efficiency. In this research, an automated fine dust tracking system was suggested to identify and track the dust generating position accurately. A GPS is installed on the secured body of the excavator which contains a crusher as an end-effector for building dismantlement. Assuming the position of the crusher is the dust generating spot, a forward kinematics analysis is performed to identify the crusher position from the body origin on which the GPS sensor is placed. With another GPS on the water-spraying robot, its relative position to the dust generating spot and its heading angle for tracking can be calculated consequently. Tracking experiments were conducted with a miniature excavator and a reduced size water spraying robot. The results showed a sufficient tracking performance enough to be applied to the water spaying machines.