Construction sites pose a significant challenge to robots due to the highly unstructured environment with rapid spatiotemporal changes and irregular obstacles. In addition, construction robots may have to work alongside human workers and coordinate and cooperate in specialized tasks such as earthmoving, drilling, sanding, masonry, electrical and plumbing installation.
To address these challenges in the construction industry and advance technical progress as a whole for robotics in unstructured environments, the Technical Committee on Construction Robotics aims to promote research in the area of construction robotics and construction automation. The scope of this technical committee includes, but is not limited to, the following topics: scene understanding algorithms in cluttered and unstructured environments, manipulation, path planning, and navigation in dynamic and cluttered environments, mapping and as-built comparison for construction sites, lifelong learning algorithms for changing environments, spatio-temporal registration and change detection algorithms, safe human-robot collaboration in construction tasks, collaborative automation for heavy construction equipment operation, wearable robotics and exoskeletons for construction workers, and construction safety using perception and robotics technology.
Examples of modern construction robot platforms and research datasets: (A) robotic excavator for dry stone construction (Gravis Robotics); (B) autonomous excavator for material loading (Baidu Research); (C) collaborative mobile 3D printing robots (NYU AI4CE lab); (D) EU CONCERT project for reconfigurable robots; (E) Nothing Stands Still Dataset [15]; (F) Jaibot drilling robot by Hilti
