Tomorrow’s Buildings: Construction Industry Goes Robotic
Date Posted: May 11, 2016
Posted In: Ideas,
From BBC News: The building site of the future is going to look very different to the one we are all used to today.
Instead of men in high-visibility jackets and hard hats, there are going to be drones buzzing overhead, robotic bulldozers and 3D printers churning out new structures.
That at least is the hope of those making technological solutions.
But first they have to convince the traditionally risk-averse construction industry that such change is necessary.
US start-up Skycatch is using drones on some high-profile building projects – although it cannot name them because of commercial sensitivity.
The drones give a bird’s-eye view of a site and provide progress reports, speed up the logistics of construction by monitoring deliveries and offer real-time updates on any changes that may need to be made to the plans.
Japanese construction machinery giant Komatsu has gone one step further – using the Skycatch drones to provide the eyes for automated bulldozers. The drones send 3D models of a building site to a computer which then feeds the information to unmanned machinery to plot their course.
Skycatch’s chief executive Christian Sanz thinks such combinations of technology could kickstart a robotic building site.
“The more visible data that you have on a site, the more you’ll see machines and robots moving things around rather than humans.”
One of the potential solutions to the housing crisis could be 3D printing, which is already making an impact on the construction industry – cutting both the time and cost of building houses.