Leica TCP 1205 gives wrong stake out distances when in robotic mode
What follows is the single most bizarre experience I’ve ever had while land surveying.I have a Leica 1205 TCP robot from roughly 2003 in the field. I went to a construction site and set up over a point. I then backsighted another point, with a good distance check. Something like 0.03′ horizontal and 0.01′ vertical if I can recall correctly. My point is, I know for sure that I was on the correct points, no mistakes there.I then do a power search and get a lock onto my 360 prism. I move the rod slightly to the left and right, while watching the horizontal angle right on the data collector. The angle correctly moves as I gently move the rod, so this is a confirmation the robot is locked onto the prism and not some other random refelctive surface.I am using an Allegro data collector which runs a SurvCE software from 2007. This is carlson’s data collector software, if I understand correctly.Now I begin staking out a house corner.The display on the screen then tells me to go 120 feet back and 60 feet left. Except, I personally know that I am on directly on top of the stake out point already. How do I know this? I’ve already staked out this data with an older, non-robotic leica total station during an earlier visit. I’m just back again to do some grading.In complete disbelief, I then attempt to stakeout one of the septic system points. In reality, it’s about 150 feet back from where I am. The robot then tells me to go back 300 feet and left 100 feet or so. It’s roughly off 100-200 feet for each of the points. Both the distance and angle seem to be wrong.I have a copy of the plan that I printed that morning from Civil3d 2009. Using a ruler, I scale off the distances to the stake out points from an existing neighboring house corner. They make perfect sense with what the older, non-robotic leica total station says they should be.I return to the office and verify all coordinates in the Allegro collector are accurate. Sure enough, they are all completely fine. I didn’t mix up northing and eastings. I can confirm that the coordinates listed in the points list on civil3d 2009 are exactly the same thing in the collector’s point list. I mouse over the points of interest and look at the coordinates being displayed in the lower portion of the screen. They are fine, and match exactly with the points list.I use this robot all the time as a manual total station with the robotics turned off doing large boundary surveys. We just had a 112 acre survey close over 41 setups for 0.21′ or a quality of 1:61,000 which is pretty good. This should serve as evidence the total station itself is capable of turning good angles and shooting good distances, at least in manual mode. This was done with the same data collector I am using with the robot to stake out during my example.So therefore, how in the world is it possible the robot is giving me such bad distances and stakeout directions? I know this is an old machine. This issue only seems to ever happen in robotic mode while locked onto a prism. When in manual mode, the total station works fine.I did some searching around and found a thread by someone else who said they had issues with the same type of robot. They tracked down the problem to something called the ATR Camera which had become faulty somehow. Is this the component that causes the robot to follow the prism while it moves around? But, wouldn’t that only affect the robot’s ability to lock onto a target? How would that hardware part also affect distances and angles?Would anyone kindly offer any insight into what they think the issue is with this robot?
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