Robotics in Construction: The Next 50 Years

Abstract

Although the construction industry responds to emerging technologies, the way buildings are designed, built, and managed will continue to shift. Parametric design, BIM, and virtual reality are just the beginning of evolutionary design procedures as building monitoring systems, smart technologies, and ICT are deployed to help buildings reach maximum energy-efficiency. The building construction site will also undergo massive change as advanced machines and robots take over operations currently carried out by human workers. This will benefit speed, quality and safety. Human workers will still be necessary but may become freed up from repetitive work to take on other roles, reducing fatigue on the body. In this developing paradigm shift, will emerging state-of-the-art technologies incorporate robotics on construction sites?