Construction is full of tasks that are repetitive, difficult, and dangerous: drilling anchor bolts, tying rebar, breaking up old concrete. So if there was a way to have a machine do those things with no human supervision that would begin to address the shortage of workers and save the bodies of current workers, not to mention saving money and increasing productivity. The good news is that some of that is beginning to happen; the bad news is that it is happening very slowly.
The traditional way we build structures is inherently inefficient and messy. Even on well-organized jobsites, materials are staged here and there, tools are seldom within arm’s reach, the ground around the project is rough, and gaining access to the active work area can be like navigating a maze. This all makes automation and robots on construction sites difficult to implement. In factory settings, robotic arms are mounted in a fixed location as products move past in an orderly fashion; in distribution centers, robots zip to a specified location on smooth unobstructed concrete floors. Integrating those solutions into field operations is tricky.
I recently reviewed the current state of robotics in a Building Forward piece. A lot of it is actually more robotic-augmented work than autonomous—things like remotely controlled demolition robots or exoskeletons. Take a look at some of the robotic things I found by clicking here.
