A Building Information Modeling (BIM)-Enabled Robotic System for Automated Indoor Construction Progress Monitoring

Abstract

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has emerged as a pivotal technology for integrating building and construction data within a single project framework. Although BIM data is employed for specific tasks like robot navigation, its full potential in robotics, especially in construction automation, remains scarce. This paper introduces a comprehensive BIM-enabled robotic system designed for monitoring indoor construction progress. A framework is proposed to retrieve and process BIM data, enabling the integration of BIM into robotic systems in every stage of progress monitoring. The proposed end-to-end system includes BIM-based robot initialization using real-time object detection, BIM-based navigation waypoints design, data acquisition and processing. Additionally, a BIM updating module is developed to enable the visualization of inspection outcomes by the robot. The efficacy of the proposed BIM-enabled robotic system is demonstrated through tests in both laboratory settings and a real-world construction site.