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The construction company DRAGADOS, with the technical collaboration of the CARTIF Technology Centre, has obtained international recognition in London by winning the prestigious New Civil Engineering Tunnelling Awards 2024 for the SOGUN system, a Guinte Robot Geometric Control System that represent a significant progress in tunnel construction technology.
The R&D&I Department of DRAGADOS, an ACS Group company, with the technological support of CARTIF, has developed a system that has enable the construction company to receive awards in the “Innovation in Instrumentation & Monitoring” and “Innovation in Tunnel Design & Construction”.
This system represents a major progress in the tunnel construction process, especially for shotcrete applications. SOGUN is an automated system that scans the interior of the tunnel in 3D using an integrated LiDAR to generate a centimetre-accurate, georeferenced point cloud of the surface. The data obtained is automatically compared with the theoretical design of the tunnel and projects an image on the walls that identifies, through colours and numbers, the areas with excess or lack of concrete.
One of the highlights of this system is its time of action: less than one minute compared to the one and a half to three hours required for manual marking of individual points. In addition, this new process provides more information on the shotcrete zone thanks to its ability to identify millions of points as opposed to dozens manually, which means an improvement in the time and quality of work in tunnel construction. In this way, the shotcrete operator need only look at the tunnel to understand the task to be carried out.
The irruption of the SOGUN system brings with numerous benefits in terms of productivity, sustainability and safety. Productivity I that it significantly reduces working times and increases the precision of finishes. Sustainability in that it optimises the use of materials, minimising waste and reducing the environmental footprint. Furthermore, the system increase safety at work due to the reduction of the risks associated related to the manual making in the most sensitive areas of the tunnel.
In addition to the awards at the NCE Tunnelling Conference in London, the SOGUN system has also received a silver award in the category “Product/Equipment Innovation of the Year” from the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association in 2024.