Autonomous construction using scarce resources in unknown environments

Magnenat, Stéphane; Philippsen, Roland; Mondada, Francesco

doi:10.1007/s10514-012-9296-x

Cited by 36 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…An example of such approaches is the Big-Canopy, which is the world's first automated construction system for building a precisely defined concrete structure in Japan [11]. Nevertheless, the degree of intelligence exhibited by commerciallyavailable robots is still deemed very limited, as robots are currently deployed only in a small subset of possible applications with low level of localization accuracy [12,31].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robotic Technologies in Concrete Building Construction: A Systematic Review

Gharbia¹,

Chang‐Richards²,

Zhong³

2019

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (IAARC)

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Several researchers have worked in the field of implementing robotics technology in concrete building construction, after the first attempt in the 1980s in Japan. Various motivations such as the shrinking labor population, the aging of skilled workers, and the construction safety issues have promoted the development of such technologies. However, the future visionary on how construction robots can transform the concrete building construction sector is still not solid nor well structured. What really needs to be changed? What types of construction activities can be taken by automated robotic technologies, as opposed to manpower or skilled worker? To answer these questions, the systematic review reported in this paper seeks to evaluate and synthesize empirical findings on the use of robotic technologies in concrete building construction. A systematic search of Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE, and Engineering Village databases was conducted, and 48,200 documents were targeted. By applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 48,149 records were excluded, and the remaining 51 records were assessed for eligibility and included in the qualitative synthesis. The systematic review shows that researchers in the USA played a leading role on robotics in concrete building construction, followed by Germany and Switzerland. The robotics application and techniques have been largely used on-site and targeted low-rise buildings. The robotic technologies that have been popular in literature included 3D printers, and swarm robotics. Most of the papers have proposed a limited novel structural design, without introducing innovative construction material. Even though the direct and indirect construction activities related to formwork, steel reinforcement, and concreting can be replaced and thus eliminated, the horizontal RC elements still cannot be built on-site without supports. Moreover, rapid prototyping found to be the best robotic design for the purpose of building construction through utilizing manipulator robots.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Robotic Technologies in Concrete Building Construction: A Systematic Review

Gharbia¹,

Chang‐Richards²,

Zhong³

2019

Proceedings of the International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (IAARC)

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“…Magnenat et al [273] made robots deploy cubic bricks to bridge gaps and to stack them up as tower constructions. Consistent alignment and cohesion between the bricks was established by magnets.…”

Section: Robots For Biohybrid Constructionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructing living buildings: a review of relevant technologies for a novel application of biohybrid robotics

Heinrich

Mammen

Hofstadler

et al. 2019

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Biohybrid robotics takes an engineering approach to the expansion and exploitation of biological behaviours for application to automated tasks. Here, we identify the construction of living buildings and infrastructure as a high-potential application domain for biohybrid robotics, and review technological advances relevant to its future development. Construction, civil infrastructure maintenance and building occupancy in the last decades have comprised a major portion of economic production, energy consumption and carbon emissions. Integrating biological organisms into automated construction tasks and permanent building components therefore has high potential for impact. Live materials can provide several advantages over standard synthetic construction materials, including self-repair of damage, increase rather than degradation of structural performance over time, resilience to corrosive environments, support of biodiversity, and mitigation of urban heat islands. Here, we review relevant technologies, which are currently disparate. They span robotics, self-organizing systems, artificial life, construction automation, structural engineering, architecture, bioengineering, biomaterials, and molecular and cellular biology. In these disciplines, developments relevant to biohybrid construction and living buildings are in the early stages, and typically are not exchanged between disciplines. We, therefore, consider this review useful to the future development of biohybrid engineering for this highly interdisciplinary application.

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“…Magnenat et al [13] present a system in which a mobile robot manipulates specially designed cubes to build functional structures. The robot explores an unknown environment, performing 2D SLAM and visually recognizing blocks and gaps in the ground.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perception-Informed Autonomous Environment Augmentation with Modular Robots

Tosun

Daudelin

Jing

et al. 2018

2018 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)

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We present a system enabling a modular robot to autonomously build structures in order to accomplish highlevel tasks. Building structures allows the robot to surmount large obstacles, expanding the set of tasks it can perform. This addresses a common weakness of modular robot systems, which often struggle to traverse large obstacles.This paper presents the hardware, perception, and planning tools that comprise our system. An environment characterization algorithm identifies features in the environment that can be augmented to create a path between two disconnected regions of the environment. Specially-designed building blocks enable the robot to create structures that can augment the environment to make obstacles traversable. A high-level planner reasons about the task, robot locomotion capabilities, and environment to decide if and where to augment the environment in order to perform the desired task. We validate our system in hardware experiments.

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Autonomous construction using scarce resources in unknown environments

Cited by 36 publications

References 49 publications

Robotic Technologies in Concrete Building Construction: A Systematic Review

Robotic Technologies in Concrete Building Construction: A Systematic Review

Constructing living buildings: a review of relevant technologies for a novel application of biohybrid robotics

Perception-Informed Autonomous Environment Augmentation with Modular Robots

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