TIDOP Research Group , within the framework of the Auto-BIM project, has developed a land drone able to make the certification and quality control tasks of civil works in different construction stages.
The Auto-BIM project, in which the TIDOP research group participates together with Vías y Construcciones, Aplitop, Aplicad, the Aimen technology center and the University of Vigo, has developed an innovative tool that allows auditing and certifying works with much more precision and quality than the traditional systems that until now have been used by the different construction and certification companies. The main goal of the Project, funded by MINECO and CEE with around 1.000.000 €, is to develop a land drone that will automatically audit the current state of civil Works, and compare it with the initial or theoretical state it should be in. To this end, an autonomous terrestrial drone was developed, equipped with several state-of-the-art sensors such as a terrestrial laser scanner to perform the three-dimensional radiography of the construction site, several obstacle detection sensors and an optimal route planner that allows the drone to orient itself within the construction site and to be autonomous in any scenario. 
The captured data is then processed by a software developed specifically for the project that allows to compare the As-Built model (actual model of the construction site) with the projected theoretical BIM model. The construction companies can undertake quality control and certification tasks faster and more flexible, having much more data than with the traditional systems of acquisition and certification. For the test of, both the drone and the processing software, a pilot test was carried out in a civil work located in Badalona (Barcelona). The chosen construction site was in different states of construction, with areas of pillars, vertical wall areas, etc., so that the drone had to be able to move through the different scenarios autonomously and optimizing the result of the three-dimensional scanning in each case. 
The results of the pilot test were a success both in terms of the operation of the drone inside the construction site, as well as in terms of the data obtained and the software used to process them. The innovative system developed was presented at the Escuela Politécnica Superior de Ávila last March, with the attendance of all the members of the consortium.
