ConstructionBots: Students Projects to Support an Initiative for an Automated Construction Yard
Robotics in the Construction industry are estimated to represent a market of 71 billion USD by 2023. With the ever increasing need for automation, the traditional construction yard will change drastically. The goal of integrating advanced robotics technology in the construction process is expected to lead to a wide set of benefits including superior construction quality, accelerated development and significant cost savings.
However, the challenges of a robotized construction yard are particularly hard and ask for a series of transformable contributions in both methods and systems. First of all, the environment within which a construction takes place is highly dynamic, uncertain, anomalous, dirty and with very significant human presence. At the same time, the construction process involves large scale machinery executing complex, demanding, often not pre-defined tasks including ground preparation, building, demolishing and more.
As such, construction robotics ask for major breakthroughs in mobile manipulation, perception, mobility over rough terrain, navigation control, interaction with human workers, multi-robot collaboration and more. How can we develop an environment and methodology to facilitate the systematic investigation and prototyping of the relevant algorithms, technologies and systems?
The “ConstructionBots” initiative aims to develop a playground for the evaluation and verification of robotic technologies in the construction process. The initiative will follow the three phases outlined below:
Simultaneously with these research phases, we aim to discuss and investigate the expected societal benefits but also challenges due to the integration of robotized construction technologies. Toward that goal we aim to facilitate a dialogue between the research community and representatives of the construction industry, workers and organized unions, policymakers and more.
Construction robotics will revolutionize the means of production and change forever how construction takes place. Improved construction quality and reduced times are expected, alongside minimized risk for personnel. Furthermore, the technologies developed for the automated construction yard can also enable other applications such as space robotics (construction in space) and search and rescue missions.
We invite students interested in contributing in the “ConstructionBots” initiative to express their interest and support a research initiative with transformable impact and long-term benefits to the society and the economy.
Express interest at: kalexis@unr.edu or autonomous.robots.lab@gmail.com
However, the challenges of a robotized construction yard are particularly hard and ask for a series of transformable contributions in both methods and systems. First of all, the environment within which a construction takes place is highly dynamic, uncertain, anomalous, dirty and with very significant human presence. At the same time, the construction process involves large scale machinery executing complex, demanding, often not pre-defined tasks including ground preparation, building, demolishing and more.
As such, construction robotics ask for major breakthroughs in mobile manipulation, perception, mobility over rough terrain, navigation control, interaction with human workers, multi-robot collaboration and more. How can we develop an environment and methodology to facilitate the systematic investigation and prototyping of the relevant algorithms, technologies and systems?
The “ConstructionBots” initiative aims to develop a playground for the evaluation and verification of robotic technologies in the construction process. The initiative will follow the three phases outlined below:
- Phase 1 – ConstructionBots at Scale: The initiative starts by realizing a construction yard mock-up environment inside the “Autonomous Robots Arena” of the University of Nevada, Reno, and developing and deploying functional scale models of excavators, loaders, backhoes, bulldozers, dump trucks, cement mixers, cranes and more. Such scale models will be modified to integrate: a) embedded electronics for their automated control (motion and manipulation tasks when applicable), b) perception systems to enable navigation and operation autonomy (primarily vision systems and inertial sensors the data of which will be optionally fused with the motion capture information provided by the Autonomous Robots Arena), as well as c) wireless communication modules to enable robot-to-robot collaboration and commanding from a common ground station.
- Phase 2 – Key ConstructionBots Technologies: Given the basic functionality for each of the “ConstructionBots”, the initiative will continue with two research objectives, namely:
- Developing the methods to automate certain construction tasks such as building a wall, installing the pillars of a new structure, performing roof work, ground preparation, wrecking and more. These operations require both accurate planning, collaboration between multiple robots, possibly robot-human collaboration, as well as robust single robot autonomy.
- Developing improved localization and mapping, semantic classification, mobile manipulation control, path planning, rough terrain navigation, and distributed multi-robot collaboration methods to enable the required robot autonomy for robust operation in the challenging environment of the construction yard.
- Integrating a set of “inspection robotics” to support the operation of the “ConstructionBots” . This will involve aerial robotic systems capable of real-time 3D mapping in order to provide a bird’s eye view and relevant 3D mapping and change detection information to the “ConstructionBots” on the ground.
- Phase 3 – Toward Large-Scale Construction Robotics: At the final phase of this initiative, the goal is to perform test studies with real-life construction vehicles and investigate the additional challenges involved due to their vastly different dynamics, the complexities of the real environment and more. Collaboration with relevant industry partners will be investigated to support the vision of large-scale realization of the ConstructionBots concept, prototyping of the associated real-life technologies and finally field demonstration. Eventually, the goal is to give birth to a large-scale initiative and organize a multi-disciplinary team capable of robustly addressing the unprecedented challenges of the construction process.
Simultaneously with these research phases, we aim to discuss and investigate the expected societal benefits but also challenges due to the integration of robotized construction technologies. Toward that goal we aim to facilitate a dialogue between the research community and representatives of the construction industry, workers and organized unions, policymakers and more.
Construction robotics will revolutionize the means of production and change forever how construction takes place. Improved construction quality and reduced times are expected, alongside minimized risk for personnel. Furthermore, the technologies developed for the automated construction yard can also enable other applications such as space robotics (construction in space) and search and rescue missions.
We invite students interested in contributing in the “ConstructionBots” initiative to express their interest and support a research initiative with transformable impact and long-term benefits to the society and the economy.
Express interest at: kalexis@unr.edu or autonomous.robots.lab@gmail.com