Monash-led team to develop new facility for construction robotics

A new facility will be developed by an interdisciplinary team from seven Australian universities, and will feature a collection of collaborative robots completing prefabrication, assembly and building tasks for the construction industry.

The work is led by Yu Bai, a Professor of structural engineering from Monash University. The one-year project is being supported by a $664,580 grant under the federal Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities scheme.

Bai said that robotics technology had made great gains in a number of industries, and had a lot to offer construction, which lagged behind sectors such as manufacturing and transport in adoption.

“The use of robotic technology can be a game-changing step as seen in other industries such as aerospace and automobile engineering,” he said in a statement.

“It means the transformation of on-site prototype construction to made-to-measure structural production and the elevation of prefabrication and off-site manufacturing into automated processes.

“Furthermore, automating traditional construction approaches can remove workers’ exposure to unsafe tasks and hazardous work environments.”

The new facility at Monash, when completed, would include a flexible and adaptive design, space for a collection of collaborative robotics, and an interactive environment which would “achieve automated prefabrication, assembly and building.”

The statement from university added that outcomes expected were a transformation of the current, highly manual construction workforce to “one that uses highly automated and accurate prefabrication processes.”

Picture: supplied

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