The adoption of robotics into the construction industry has been progressing slower than in the manufacturing and industrial sectors. Current shortfalls in skilled labor, productivity trends, and ongoing safety challenges point to the need for a drastic shift toward adopting robotics. Addressing these shortfalls would be a necessary component of the shift toward industrializing the construction industry. Despite this lag in technology adoption, the interest and development of robotic technology targeting the construction industry has grown in recent years and is ranging from the use of drones for tracking to advances in offsite fabrication. However, the integration into fundamental site construction necessitates reconsidering the information technology infrastructure needed to support detailed task execution information needs in the change from craft labor to robotic operations. This research presents the identification and mapping of the Information Technology (IT) system architecture required to support building information modeling (BIM) to robotic construction. Combining elements of BIM architecture and information exchanges with the needed construction task decomposition is required. These elements are mapped to the robotic system elements vital for mobile robotic operations. In addition to defining the functions and integration required to support the BIM to robotic Construction Workflow, shortcomings in existing infrastructure, notably regarding the ability to decompose construction fabrication and assembly means and methods, are defined.
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Information Exchange for Supporting BIM to Robotic Construction
In the past, the construction industry has been slow to adopt new technology. There has been a rapid expansion of technologies, often referred to as Industry 4.0, to aid in the use of automation. One challenge paralleling these new technologies is implementing how a robot interprets design information, specifically information from a Building Information Model (BIM). This paper presents a method for identifying and transforming information from BIM to support robotic material placement on the construction site. This research will include a review of what information can be directly extracted from the model and what must be supplemented to the model for the robot to perform defined tasks within a construction site. The construction sites’ dynamic nature poses multiple challenges that must be addressed for the information extracted from a model to be used by a robot in daily construction operations. This research also identifies barriers and limitations based upon current practice, such as different levels of development or model content as well as needed precision within the information provided for a mobile robot to complete a defined task.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1928626
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10358892
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- ASCE Construction Research Congress
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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The adoption of robotics into the construction industry has been much slower than in manufacturing and industrial sectors. Current shortfalls in skilled labor, productivity trends, and ongoing safety challenges point to the need for a drastic shift toward the adoption of robotics as a component of a shift toward industrialized construction. Despite this lag, the interest and development of robotic technology targeting construction has grown in recent years, ranging from the use of drones for tracking to use in offsite fabrication. However, the integration into fundamental site construction requires reconsideration of the information technology infrastructure needed to support detailed task execution information needs in the transition from craft labor to robotic operations. This research presents the identification and mapping of the IT System Architecture required to support BIM to Robotic Construction. Combining elements of the Building Information Modeling architecture and information exchanges with the needed construction task decomposition is required. These elements are mapped to the robotic system elements required for mobile robotic operations. In addition to defining the functions and integration required to support the BIM to Robotic Construction Workflow, shortcomings in existing infrastructure, notably regarding the ability to decompose construction fabrication and assembly means and methods are defined.more » « less
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Conference Paper:
- https://doi.org/9780784483961
