Serve French fries, manufacture cars and trucks, deliver takeout orders, make same-day shipping possible for millions of e-commerce orders every day, and assemble complex electrical systems and aeronautical component. Heck, robots are even being used to perform surgeries. It seems that the possibilities for what robots can do is limitless. Robotic technology has revolutionized hundreds of industries across the globe, but the engineering and construction industries have been slow to follow suit.
“The adoption of technology in construction has lagged behind almost everything except hunting and fishing for the past decades,” said Josh Johnson, a consultant at McKinsey who follows the building industry.
Construction sites are complicated, busy and potentially dangerous, even when all safety protocols are followed to a T, so it does make sense on some level that robotics haven’t been fully embraced by the industry. Building sites also extremely unpredictable, making them a difficult place to introduce robots. That doesn’t entirely account for the lack of interest by the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) community to at least make progress in catching up with the manufacturing industry, where 3D printing is rapidly revolutionizing the way everything from sneakers to medical devices are made.
Artificial intelligence hasn’t advanced far enough yet to make it possible for the widespread use of robots on skyscraper, bridge and highway construction projects, but there are a handful of startups trying to make inroads. Autonomous construction vehicles have been tested as a way to move raw materials and tools around sites. One application where robotics has proven effective in bridge building is rebar placement and tying. Advanced Construction Robotics and the TyBot machine can tie 1,000 rebar intersections an hour, which can lead to a 50 percent reduction in human work-hours.
Rebar tying is one of the few bridge construction tasks that is perfectly suited to being performed by a robot. With this task, the robot operates on a grid system and moves in perfectly straight lines scanning for intersections of rebar that has already been placed. When it comes to bridge building, the best way to begin involving robots more fully is taking a collaborative approach between humans and the machines.
Autodesk, a software industry leader in engineering, design and construction, is constantly pushing the envelope to help develop advanced solutions for its clients, and that approach expands to the robotics front. The research division at Autodesk aims to find ways to open communication and functionality between a company’s software products and advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, virtual/augmented reality and simulations.
In collaboration with the University of Southern California’s (USC’s) School of Architecture, Autodesk sought to build a complex pedestrian bridge in Los Angeles. The Arroyo Pedestrian Bridge has a 70-foot span length and is made of over 500 discrete steel structural members, all of which are entirely unique in their shape, length and curvature. There is not a single 90-degree angle in the bridge.
“It was pure structure. It was something the students don’t often get. They were working on something that was just so purely structural and working with the aesthetics of structure as well. The geometric aspect of it was very complicated, but it made it more free. It really was eye-catching. People really responded to it at the time,” said R. Scott Mitchell, USC associate professor who led the students through the design and fabrication process.
A bridge this intricate would be extremely difficult to fabricate and virtually impossible to construct in the field. Knowing this, the team at USC reached out to Autodesk’s Research Robotics Lab to form a partnership and push the limits of constructability and the capabilities of the company’s Maya software. The USC student team’s goal was to design the entire bridge digitally and then build their concept. Empowered and motivated by the knowledge that their structure would be built, the students were able to attack the project with an abundance of creativity.
USC student job captain Adan Macias said, “As a student you never think, ‘This project is going to be built.’ We’re always taught to think, ‘Potentially, this project can be built; how would you build it? Take into consideration all the site context and whatnot.’ But I think for the bridge, it was a little bit different in a sense because David had that mentality where he was like, ‘We’re going to build this thing.’ And it motivated us, in a sense, to push hard during the design phase.”
The remoteness and pristine nature of the construction site, which is located in a sensitive, natural area, required complete prefabrication.
Enter the robots.
Autodesk has been making a concerted effort to research the potential for collaborative robotics between its software users’ workflows and processes. There are tremendous opportunities for growth in the AEC industry, and the potential to unlock the power of robotics can be achieved through synergies between the modeling and rendering applications used by designers to guide the work of the robots. The Autodesk Research Robotics Lab aims to make it possible to construct complicated designs that would previously have only worked on paper due to human limitations.
In collaborative robotics, humans and robots work in tandem to accomplish difficult tasks. For fabrication of the Arroyo Pedestrian Bridge, a massive robotic arm was used to lift and precisely position steel members for welding by master welders. A robot could conceivably be programmed to perform the welding, but it is still faster for a master welder to make the required welds along complex curves. Thus, the collaborative approach to building this bridge, where the robot was responsible for the brute force and heavy lifting and the humans were tasked with handling the work that required extreme precision and nimble fingers.
With the successful completion of this stunning pedestrian bridge, Autodesk and USC have showcased that there is true value in collaborative robotics when it comes to designing and building complex structures. Robots are already being used in milling, welding and fabrication of simple steel members, but this is a new application where robots have been shown to have value while working on more complex shapes.
A collaborative relationship between robots and humans will likely continue unlocking new potential in architecture, design and construction. After seeing the impact of robotics on his project, Adan Macias is definitely a believer. “Robotics will open a lot more doors to creativity in the field of architecture and also help facilitate or make more efficient the construction of buildings or the construction of any design,” he said.
As technology evolves, we may be entering a new golden age of architecture and construction, especially in our cityscapes. Autodesk has also sponsored the design and construction of a 3D-printed pedestrian bridge in Amsterdam. The MX3D Bridge was constructed by industrial robots using multi-axis 3D printing and has been load tested up to 20 tons. The 12-foot-long steel bridge has also been built with a sensor network that will constantly provide feedback of strain, displacement and vibration data, which will enable engineers to monitor the performance of the bridge over its life span. The sensor data will also be fed into a living computer model that will be used to improve the process for future 3D-printed structures. 3D-printed bridges have also been built and tested in China and by the U.S. Marines in California.
Robots are coming to revolutionize the construction industry, and they’ll likely be here in force sooner than most industry leaders realize. It is exciting to envision a team of hundreds of robots stepping in for humans to perform excavation, welding and brick-laying. Perhaps the more exciting potential for robots is as tools to push the limits of what can be built, unlocking new layers and levels of human creativity. Robots could play a huge role in the design and construction of signature bridges and structures, and their full potential will be unlocked by allowing designers and robots to work together in a collaborative workflow fueled by advancements and investment in software.