Construction robots are now working at a job site near you. After decades of successful operation in controlled factories, robotic technology is ready for the less predictable context of in situ building. The motivations for this shift seem obvious: for humans, building construction is labor-intensive and full of potential hazards, and an increasingly volatile climate means fewer hours to work safely outdoors. Automated machines can also fill in during labor shortages and carry out the more tedious and repetitive tasks, keeping projects on track despite workforce challenges.
However, the onsite building has many challenges for robots, as the construction arena is an entirely different world than the manufacturing floor. “On a construction site, there are many unknown factors that a construction robot must be able to account for effectively,” explains Jiansong Zhang, an assistant professor of construction management technology at Purdue University. “This requires much more advanced sensing and reasoning technologies than those commonly used in a manufacturing environment.”
The adoption of computer vision algorithms provides robotic systems such as the one Zhang’s team has developed with a more sophisticated awareness of their physical contexts. This enables them to track obstructions and hazards while maintaining close alignment with building information modeling (BIM) data. Such advances have led to the proliferation of a wide variety of robots that have found their way alongside their human counterparts.
For example, one technology geolocates BIM data to the site at the start of a project. Dusty Robotics’ FieldPrinter operates like a roaming printhead, transforming the ground plane into a blueprint of the intended design. An optimal tool for interior construction, the small, boxy robot prints lines, points, and text from DWG and CSV files directly on an existing slab. Custom line styles can be used to distinguish different building systems. When finished, the device provides a report of all completed activities. In an example project, the FieldPrinter was deployed to mark new parking at LAX, and it covered 3.3 million square feet—printing 939 linear feet per hour and saving nearly 7,000 person-hours of effort.
Advanced Construction Robotics offers two robots to assist with the placement of reinforcing bars during construction. IronBOT moves and places longitudinal and horizontal rebar in their intended locations. The gantry crane-based rebar delivery system deposits 5,000 pounds of rebar per hour in lengths from 9 to 60 feet. According to the manufacturer, the robot requires no pre-mapping or calibration and can be fully operational within its first day on the job site. TyBOT, IronBOT’s counterpart, ties horizontal rebar intersections using 15-pound wire spool. The device can complete 1,200 ties per hour with rebar up to #8 by #9 in size. Like IronBOT, the robot can operate 24/7, regardless of weather. Together, the robots can shorten rebar placement and tying time by half, the company claims.
Drilling is another task that requires precision and is often repetitive and tedious—particularly when it involves ceiling installations. Hilti has developed the Jaibot, a semi-autonomous robot that marks and drills holes for the installation of interior finishes as well as mechanical, plumbing, and electrical assemblies. The machine can be programmed with detailed information, including hole drilling locations, diameters, and depths, and has an integral dust-removal system that minimizes particle buildup. The cordless Jaibot utilizes Autocad or Revit files and can work continuously for up to eight hours before recharging.
Roofing installation is similarly strenuous, with the additional risk of falls—earning a place as the third most dangerous job in the U.S. Rufus, by Renovate Robotics, is a robot that installs asphalt shingles on residential roofs. Once the underlayment is installed and the roof is weathertight, Rufus can go to work. Pre-attached anchors at each roof plane’s corners offer tie-points for cables that the robot uses to navigate the sloped surface. Rufus ascends to the roof via a ladder lift and begins placing and nailing individual shingles, requesting additional supplies when they run low. The fact that asphalt shingles comprise about 75% of the roughly five million residential roofing projects that occur annually suggests that Rufus may be in considerable demand.
The most iconic construction robot is likely Spot, Boston Dynamics’ strikingly zoomorphic android companion. Spot is a versatile “dynamic sensing platform” that can continuously roam a job site looking for hazards and monitoring general operations. The quadruped machine exhibits full spherical perception and the agility to navigate challenging terrain—a capacity the manufacturer calls “athletic intelligence.” Spot can carry up to 14 kg of additional apparatus, such as an arm that can grab and rotate objects like door handles. A proprietary software platform called Orbit allows comprehensive management of robot fleets on a construction site.
As these examples demonstrate, construction robotics offers a wide range of applications and formats with no one-size-fits-all solution. These innovations all require human intervention, therefore offering to reduce the physical toil, tedium, and danger of construction work without measurably displacing human labor. Construction robotics raises valid questions about the optimal approaches for human-machine interaction, increased training requirements, and privacy implications of continuous monitoring and surveillance. Regardless, the fact that the U.S. Construction Robot Market is anticipated to grow 17.5% between 2023 and 2030 indicates the inevitability of this trend. Soon, the question will not be if robots have been deployed on a job site—but what types and how many robots are operating alongside their human co-workers.
Read more:The latest from columnist Blaine Brownell, FAIA, includes a review of: A hypostruction house in Miami | Azabudai Hill | The Rise of Wood as a Sustainable Material | Building the Future with Snow | Reimagining Grandeur | The rise of phygital spaces | the potential of STFE | an interview with Pritzker prize-winning architect Riken Yamamoto, a review of 3D-Printed Nanocellulose Materials, a roundup on sustainable manufacturers in Egypt, a review of the Grand Egyptian Museum, a look into Cairo's informal settlements, a profile on textile designer and weaver Suzanne Tick, and he also looks at emerging carbon capture and storage technologies, and the blue economy.
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