I totally agree that this is a must-have. Most of the existing procedures and standards in construction are based on conventional manual techniques, that does not fit well to a robotic solution. Automating many tasks in construction requires inventing new process and solutions but facing the lack of objective standards, assessment and certification schemes for new solutions.

Standards are definitely required but in the processing of developing them we must make room for innovation as they sometimes cripple creativity.

There exist several different types of standards. Process-focussed standards and/or so called management system standards usually provide a lot of room for innovation, as they do not specify a fixed outcome. Also you may implement various complianc levels in a standard to give innovators and start-ups a bit more room.

Thanks to Mr. Wuni for his answer, I highly appreciate someone inclines in this discussion. As part of the discussion on this I would really like to challenge the opinion that standards have a negative effect on innovation. I think the contrary is the case. It depends of course what type of standardisation activity we are talking about and in what technology adoption stage we propose it to kick in.

At least in the European realm we have more and more activites comming up that shed light on the relation between (early stage) development, innovation, and standardisation: https://www.cen.eu/news/events/Pages/EV-2019-028.aspx

In Horizon2020 funding programs it becomes recently a must to include standardisation activities for projects that equal to TRL level 3 or higher.

What standards do is, that they can help to make the early development stage more efficient (e.g. less time is spent on defining basic requiremnts, etc.), and on the other hand reduce uncertainty and risk on the innovator/entrepreneur and/or business side. Having gone through a couple of construction robot development projects, I would say that this could have helped a lot.

In principle, I think there are 3 major „subject categories“ related to construction robots that may be targeted by standardisation activities: a) the development process, b) the technology itself (including system performance), and c) the work context (work procedures, site conditions, ROD/DFMA, etc.).

Innovation wise, all 3 standardisation subject categoreis are relvant, but in slightly different ways: category c) would faciliate clarification of the use cases and aloow for scale, category a) would help that innovators to not spend years to figure out a straight-forward development process, category b) would reduce the rsiks for the solution adopters such as contractors.

Thank you, Dr.-Ing Linner for your sound argument.

Well, standards are not the only issue or problem sourrounding the realisation of construction robot “innovations”. There are a couple of others of course: business models, value chains, infrastructure, training and work process dsign, usability, etc. Interestingly, most of the major issues - in my view - are closely linked to the technology - but are not technical issues per se.

Probbably we should open other threads or questions for the other issues :-)

I have opened 3 new threads on linked topics:

Construction robots – what is the right degree of automation?

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Construction_robots-what_is_the_right_degree_of_automation

Construction robots - compatibility with context and surrounding infrastructure required (e.g. BIM, site processes, building composition/building components and parts?)?

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Construction_robots-compatibility_with_context_and_surrounding_infrastructure_ecosystem_required_eg_BIM_processes_building_components

What are the key technologies for future construction robots?

https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_are_the_key_technologies_for_future_construction_robots

Hi Thomas.

Thanks for opening this discussion.

For me the key question is “ where is the bottleneck in the construction process?“. There is little point in automating tasks that are not at a bottleneck as it just moves work to the bottlneck faster without enabling the overall process to complete more quickly.

I imagine that the answer to my question will vary from project to project, and even from one part of a project to another. I would also expect that there would be some patterns that emerge when we start studying where the bottlenecks are and this will tell us where we need to focus our attempts at automation and robotisation.

I imagine

Wit "standards" as well as with "bottlenecks": not sure if we shall see all this bottom up only. Agree, some standards and solution for bottlenecks need to and will "emerge". But we - theoretically - could also determine them to some top down. The bottlenecks in construction are to some extent a result of someone "designing" the overall work process. If the manufacturing line has significant flaws in its very basic conception, does it make sense to search for the bottleneck? :-)

There are two particular bottlenecks in construction:

• work waiting for workers
• workers waiting for work.

the first is a bottleneck for clients and general contractors; the second is a problem for sub-contractors, specialist design teams and specialist trade teams.

it is only when everyone collaborates that it is possible for the whole team on a project to address both of these issues simultaneously. There is at least one production planning process, The Last Planner System (LPS), that will enable the simultaneous discussion of both issues.

For more on LPS see:Technical Report Last Planner: 5 + 1 crucial & collaborative conversations fo...

For more on bottlenecks and automation in construction see: Conference Paper Lean & the deployment of robots in construction

Dr.-Ing., aim to increase efficiency and reliability, the construction robots can be made to automate the work to increase efficiency. Transforma robotics is making robots and help to increase standards' efficiency and reliability. TUV is a global standards authority that can define new standards. BCA creates standards for Singapore.