Dynamic planning and assembly for constructing mortar-joint multi-leaf stone masonry walls with a robotic arm

Abstract

The construction industry faces growing challenges in sustainability, labor shortages, and efficiency. Stone masonry, known for its durability and low environmental impact, has declined in modern construction due to high labor costs and slow building processes. This work presents a robotic system for automating the construction of mortar-joint, multi-leaf stone masonry walls. Our approach integrates stone layout optimization, sequence planning, vacuum-based grasping, automated pick-and-place motion, and vision- and sensor-guided trajectory correction. A digital twin system provides real-time feedback to improve accuracy and adaptability. To evaluate our method, we construct a 700 × 700 × 400 mm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> masonry wall and compare it to those built by skilled masons. The final structure demonstrates comparable strength, stone interlocking, and stone filling to manually built walls. As the first robotic approach to mortar-joint multi-leaf masonry construction, this work addresses key challenges such as robotic manipulation and dense packing of irregular stones with wet mortar. Our findings contribute to advancing robotic construction with natural materials and offer a scalable framework for future architectural applications.