Employing robots to achieve sustainable construction and address skill shortage

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The world is moving towards sustainable construction to address climate change problems. The prime objective of sustainable construction is to reduce the impact of construction on the environment by using renewable and recyclable building materials. Robots are used in the construction industry for bricklaying, 3D printing, construction site security, demolition purposes, and autonomous construction vehicles. Prefabrication and 3D printing are the most widely used areas for robotics in the construction industry.

Robots enable construction activities to be undertaken in a potentially dangerous environment that is not readily accessible to the human workforce. In addition, they are more accurate, consume fewer resources, and run machinery for a shorter period, allowing construction companies to reduce their environmental impact. Industrial robots also come with disadvantages, such as high initial cost, professional training, maintenance, and fear of replacing the human workforce. 

All robots on construction sites are not physical machines; some are software robots especially used in data gathering and analysis. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is extensively used in the construction industry. It allows robots to automate tasks like data analysis and find new ways for companies to reduce their environmental footprint.

Recent developments using robotics technology in the global construction industry:

• In China, a 590 feet Yangqu hydropower project will be constructed on Tibetan Plateau using 3D printing, robots, unmanned excavators, trucks, pavers, and bulldozers controlled by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Once it is completed, the project will be the world’s tallest structure made by 3D printing technique surpassing a 20-feet tall two-story office building in Dubai.
• Diamond Age, a robotics start-up involved in automating new home construction, has raised US$ 50 million in a Series A funding round that is led by Prime Movers lab in March 2022. The company is building 26 robotic tools to offset 50% of the manual labor required for new home construction and reduce the construction time from 9 months to 30 days. Diamond Age also uses robotics technology and 3D printing to improve its automation platform and scale up the home construction projects. 
• Printstones, an Austrian start-up, revealed its new multifunctional construction robot prototype in April 2021. The robot can perform various actions, including climbing stairs, driving through doors, handling and transporting building materials, observation, and drilling. 

The increasing adoption of construction robots in place of manual labor is one of the major shifts observed in the construction sector due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Robots can address the labor shortage issue by performing many repetitive and dangerous tasks more efficiently in shorter periods. For instance, countries like Singapore that are more dependent on foreign workers have introduced robots in various industries during the pandemic. A four-legged robot, Spot, is used to scan sections of mud and gravel on Singapore’s construction site to check work progress and give feedback to the company’s control room.

Construction robots and automation are best suitable for performing laborious and tedious tasks like finishing drywall installation. A robotic arm can be used in this case to tape, spray, and sand drywall surfaces. Limiting robots from performing such tasks makes a skilled workforce focus on critical tasks that need decision-making and human touch. Hence, the future of the global construction industry is expected to be robots working with humans to make their work a lot safer and more efficient instead of robots replacing the human workforce. 

To know more and gain a deeper understanding of the global construction industry, click here.