Robots break new ground in construction industry
Robots break new ground in construction industry
By TERENCE CHEA March 19, 2018
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — As a teenager working for his dad’s
construction business, Noah Ready-Campbell dreamed that robots could take over
the dirty, tedious parts of his job, such as digging and leveling soil for
building projects.
Now the former Google engineer is turning that dream into
a reality with Built Robotics, a startup that’s developing technology to allow
bulldozers, excavators and other construction vehicles to operate themselves.
“The idea behind Built Robotics is to use automation
technology make construction safer, faster and cheaper,” said Ready-Campbell,
standing in a dirt lot where a small bulldozer moved mounds of earth without a
human operator.
The San Francisco startup is part of a wave of automation
that’s transforming the construction industry, which has lagged behind other
sectors in technological innovation.
Backed by venture capital, tech startups are developing
robots, drones, software and other technologies to help the construction
industry to boost speed, safety and productivity.
Autonomous machines are changing the nature of
construction work in an industry that’s struggling to find enough skilled
workers while facing a backlog of building projects.
Robots have moved into factories, warehouses, stores and
even our homes.
“We need all of the robots we can get, plus all of the
workers working, in order to have economic growth,” said Michael Chui, a
partner at McKinsey Global Institute in San Francisco. “As machines do some of
the work that people used to do, the people have to migrate and transition to
other forms of work, which means lots of retraining.”
Bichen Wu, center, and Ed Walker use a laptop to
determine what a autonomous bulldozer is seeing at Built Robotics.
Workers at Berich Masonry in Englewood, Colorado, recently
spent several weeks learning how to operate a bricklaying robot known as SAM.
That’s short for Semi-Automated Mason, a $400,000 machine which is made by
Victor, New York-based Construction Robotics. The machine can lay about 3,000
bricks in an eight-hour shift - several times more than a mason working by
hand.
SAM’s mechanical arm picked up bricks, covered them with
mortar and carefully placed them to form the outside wall of a new elementary
school. Working on a scaffold, workers loaded the machine with bricks and
scraped off excess mortar left behind by the robot.
The goal, said company president Todd Berich, is to use
technology to take on more work and keep his existing customers happy. “Right
now I have to tell them ‘no’ because we’re at capacity,” he said.
Bricklayer Michael Walsh says the robot lessens the load
on his body, but he doesn’t think it will take his job. “It ain’t going to
replace people,” Walsh said.
The International Union of Bricklayers and Allied
Craftworkers isn’t too concerned that robots will displace its members anytime
soon, according to policy director Brian Kennedy.
“There are lots of things that SAM isn’t capable of doing
that you need skilled bricklayers to do,” Kennedy said. “We support anything
that supports the masonry industry. We don’t stand in the way of technology.”
The rise of construction robots comes as the building
industry faces a severe labor shortage.
A recent survey by the Associated General Contractors of
America found that 70 percent of construction firms are having trouble finding
skilled workers.
“To get qualified people to handle a loader or a haul
truck or even run a plant, they’re hard to find right now,” said Mike Moy, a
mining plant manager at Lehigh Hanson. “Nobody wants to get their hands dirty
anymore. They want a nice, clean job in an office.”
At his company’s mining plant in Sunol, California, Moy
is saving time and money by using a drone to measure the giant piles of rock
and sand his company sells for construction.
The autonomous quadcopter can survey the entire 90-acre
site in 25 minutes. Previously, the company hired a contractor who would take a
whole day to measure the piles with a truck-mounted laser.
The drone is made by Silicon Valley-based Kespry, which
converts the survey data into detailed 3-D maps and charges an annual
subscription fee for its services. The startup also provides drones and mapping
services to insurance companies surveying homes damaged by natural disasters.
“Not only is it safer and faster, but you get more data,
as much as ten to a hundred times more data,” said Kespry CEO George Mathew.
“This becomes a complete game changer for a lot of the industrial work that’s
being accomplished today.”
A Kespry drone is used to measure earthwork grading
operations on a construction site.
At Built Robotics, Ready-Campbell, the company’s founder
and CEO, envisions the future of construction work as a partnership between
humans and smart machines.
“The robots basically do the 80 percent of the work,
which is more repetitive, more dangerous, more monotonous,” he said. “And then
the operator does the more skilled work, where you really need a lot of finesse
and experience.”
Built Robotics recently used its automated bulldozer —
retrofitted with sensors and autonomous driving technology — to grade the earth
on a construction site in San Jose. The project allows the startup to both test
its technology and generate some revenue.
“I’m very excited about where autonomous machines could
be used in our industry,” said Kyle Trew, a contractor who worked with Built
Robotics on the San Jose project. “Hopefully I can use this as a tool to get an
edge on some of my competitors.”
Associated Press writer Peter Solomon Banda contributed
to this report from Englewood, Colo.
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