Where has Construction Automation been successful?
a day ago
- Construction is highly labor-intensive, with direct labor making up nearly 50% of costs for single-family homes, compared to 6-8% for cars, driving long-standing interest in automation.
- Historical construction automation falls into two successful categories: off-site factory tasks (e.g., steel fabrication, precast concrete) and on-site tasks that are factory-like (simple, repetitive, along a path).
- Many on-site automation attempts (e.g., bricklaying robots) failed because tasks aren't repetitive enough, require frequent manual resetting, or can't handle real-world imperfections like uneven slabs.
- Japan's extensive construction robot push in the late 20th century struggled due to setup time, lack of repetition, and difficulty making sites factory-like, despite using skyscraper factories.
- Technological limitations in information-processing are now being overcome by modern AI, allowing machines to adapt to varying conditions, leading to a new wave of construction automation startups post-2020.