Development of Multi-robot 3D Thermal Modeling System for Built Environments
Journal
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction
Start Page
682
End Page
689
ISSN
2413-5844
ISBN (of the container)
978-064583223-5
ISBN
[9780645832235]
Date Issued
2026-06-22
Author(s)
Abstract
Robotic thermal modeling deploys a single mobile robot to collect data and construct thermal point clouds, but such systems and processes are time-consuming, expensive, and intrusive to building operations. This paper introduces the preliminary development of a small multi-robot system that establishes the geometric and calibration foundations for three-dimensional (3D) thermal modeling of built environments. The system integrates three components: a 3D thermal modeling module that combines RGBD and thermal cameras; a point cloud generation module that constructs local and fused point clouds; and a multi-robot SLAM module that aligns point cloud data from multiple robots within a shared global reference frame. Experiments were conducted to evaluate intrinsic and cross-camera calibration of the thermal and RGBD cameras, as well as multi-point cloud reconstruction using two mobile robots. Results demonstrate that individual point clouds can be successfully aligned and merged into a consistent global point cloud, which indicates the feasibility of cooperative data collection using a group of small and low-cost robotic platforms. In summary, this work establishes a foundation for full multi-robot 3D thermal modeling. Future work will integrate thermal data into the global point cloud and evaluate in larger and more complex environments.
Event(s)
43rd International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction, ISARC 2026,22 June 2026 - 26 June 2026,Singapore
Subjects
3D Thermal Modeling
Camera Calibration
Multi-Robot System
Swarm SLAM
Publisher
International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction (IAARC)
Type
conference paper