Toward Empathetic Construction Robotics

Abstract

With the increase of construction robots, the future construction environments are expected to become spaces where various workforce and robots will closely collaborate together(human-robot collaboration). However, current ways of collaboration between people and robots, which lacks an empathy, can hinder the successful fulfillment of the technical potential of construction robots. Therefore, this paper introduces various studies of the DPM (Dynamic Project Management) Lab at the University of Michigan to realize active and harmonious collaboration through empathy for humans of robots. Empathetic construction robots based on these studies are expected to contribute to the development of the construction industry in a more productive and safe direction by creating a favorable and worker-friendly construction environment.