Design for Robotic Construction (Continued)
Research Team
Our Motivation:
"In the future, the full benefits of using robots on-site may not be attained without adjusting the facility design and components to the robotic construction method as previously shown in manufacturing industries.
Our prior work has prototyped a User Interface that could check the feasibility of robotic construction and consider how the robot interacts in 3D with the construction product design.
To move further, we still need to work on case studies with builders, designers, robotics manufacturers, and construction innovators to understand and improve the generality of the previously developed solution."
Research Contribution
Validate the generality of the Design for Robotic Construction approach by employing case studies from various perspectives, including builders, designers, robot manufacturers, and construction innovators.
Enhance design feasibility metrics and optimize the User Interface's performance to detect design-related infeasibilities. Generate a variety of redesign suggestions and evaluate their corresponding schedule and cost impacts to facilitate robotic construction.
Problem
Practical Problem
Over the past years at CIFE, we have studied 24 construction robotic cases spread across 8 countries. We have gained a comprehensive understanding of the applicability of these robots in terms of their impact on safety, quality, schedule, and cost.
However, in 67% of the cases (16 out of 24), we observed a misalignment between robot capabilities and the design and construction features. Consequently, the benefits of using robots on-site may not be fully realized.
To prevent such design misalignments, the AEC industry needs to incorporate robotic construction considerations during the design and early construction planning phases.
Solution
A set of design metrics for feasibility checks for robotic construction.
A user interface for robotic construction that could express robot capabilities in 3D, suggest design decisions, and evaluate the corresponding cost and schedule impacts.
Regarding the design suggestions, we could consider changes to the construction project or to the robot product.
Added Value For The Industry
The Design for Robotic Construction (DfRC) approach could assist builders, designers, robot manufacturers, and construction innovators in determining the feasibility of robotic construction from a design perspective.
The User Interface helps generate a variety of redesign suggestions to render robotic construction feasible and provides an assessment of the corresponding cost and schedule impacts.
By conducting correlation analysis between robot characteristics and the types of design features that need emphasis, we could understand the typology of product design decisions that need to consider when deploying construction robots.
Cooperation Partner
In this year's research, we validate the generality of the method using data provided by Stanford University's Construction Robotics class in 2021, 2022, and 2023. There are a total of 24 cases, with 22 robots and 22 construction projects.
Robot | GC |
| OKIBO Autonomous finishing robot | Goldbeck |
| Scaled Robotics | MT Højgaard |
| Construction RoboticsTM, MULE | COSAPI |
| Construction RoboticsTM, SAM-100 | COSAPI |
| HILTI EXO-O1 | DPR |
| Hausbots robot | Implenia |
| Obayashi’s autonomous crane | Obayashi |
| CANVAS Robot | DPR |
| Boston Dynamics SPOT robot | NCC |
| CivRobotics | MT Højgaard |
| HDlab, Exoskeleton (ShoudlerX) | NULL |
| Tybot, Advanced Construction Robotics | Implenia |
| Tybot, Advanced Construction Robotics | Traylor Bros., Inc |
| Jaibot, Hilti | DPR |
| Obayashi Logistics System | Obayashi Corporation |
| Liftbot, KEWAZO | Traylor Bros., Inc. |
| Joint sealing robot | Goldbeck |
| Vita Inclinata | DPR |
| Raise Robotics | Swinerton |
| Obayashi | Obayashi |
| Naska ai | Whiting Turner |
| Dusty Robotics | DPR |
| Kajima | Kajima |
| Renovate robotics | Genesis |
Timeline
| Date | Activity | Outcome |
Spring 2021 | Research became awarded: "Design for Robotic Construction" |
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Summer 2021 | Start working with industry partners on case-studies |
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Fall 2021 | Literature review to understand product metrics |
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| Define a set of metrics to express robot capabilities connected to construction and design decisions |
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Winter 2021 | Prototyped a User Interface suggesting design decisions at the product level to check for robotic feasibility |
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| Key Contribution of the "Design for Robotic Construction" research: - Prototyped a User Interface suggesting design decisions at the product level to check for robotic feasibility based on literature review and two robot examples. - Defined a set of metrics to express robot capabilities connected to construction and design decisions. |
Spring 2022 | Research became awarded: "Design for Robotic Construction (Continued)" |
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Fall 2022 | Start of the Research / Literature review |
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| Updated the metrics used for design feasibility check | |
| Updated the features of the user interface | |
| Validated the generality of the DfRC approach for design feasibility check with 16 case studies from Stanford University's Construction Robotics class | |
Winter 2022/23 | Provided the MVP (minimum viable product) redesign suggestions for the 16 cases from the perspective of schedule and cost impact to make robot construction feasible. | |
| Submitted a paper at 2023 European Conference on Computing in Construction titled "Exploring a Design for Robotic Construction approach: two case studies matching robot and construction design features" |
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Spring 2023 | Collect perspectives from different stakeholders (designers, builders, robot manufacturers, construction innovators) and conduct use case tests on the User Interface |
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| Develop a demo that incorporates a Robot Operating System (ROS). The user can specify the 3D models of the building and the robot, as well as related parameters (including robot's trajectory and motion configuration) | |
Summer 2023 | Completed the analysis of 8 cases covered in the Construction Robotics class for Spring 2023, further validating the generality of the DfRC approach. | |
The paper titled "Exploring a Design for Robotic Construction approach: two case studies matching robot and construction design features" has been accepted and published online by the 2023 European Conference on Computing in Construction. | ||
Conducted a correlation analysis between robot characteristics and types of design metrics that require specific emphasis, providing insights into the corresponding relationships among the types of design decisions required for various categories of robots. |
Project Summary
(Provides you with a brief and clear summary of the insights and outcomes at the end of the funded year.)
As robots become more adaptable to operate in unstructured on-site environments, builders, designers, robot manufacturers, and construction innovators need to facilitate the deployment of robots from design perspectives.
However, today’s process of deploying robots typically starts while the construction phase is underway, and the benefits of using robots on-site may not be fully realized due to design misalignments.
Thus, we propose a Design for Robotic Construction (DfRC) approach that could consider robotic construction during the design and early construction planning phase. Firstly, a set of design metrics is proposed for conducting feasibility checks for robotic construction. Secondly, a user interface prototype was developed to express robot capabilities in 3D, suggest design decisions, and evaluate the corresponding cost and schedule impacts.
The generality of the approach was validated through 24 case studies from Stanford University's Construction Robotics class. We provided redesign suggestions for 67% (16) of these cases. In addition, a correlation analysis was conducted between robot characteristics and the types of design features that require emphasis to help relevant stakeholders understand what product design decisions need to be considered when deploying different types of construction robots.
