Automating Assembly on Construction Sites

Abstract

This thesis seeks to address practical challenges within mainstream construction operations, proposing the adaptation of existing processes and equipment to facilitate a new automated assembly capability. Automation has enabled significant increases to productivity in manufacturing and logistics, and a wide range of automated machines have been developed for construction industry applications. However, most have failed to gain widespread adoption in industry, primarily due to poor compatibility with the commercial environment and practical requirements of mainstream construction work. Through examination of these characteristics, the development of automated assembly capabilities by incrementally adapting existing equipment and components is identified as being highly conducive to achieving significant industry adoption. The scope of this approach is developed around preliminary criteria for construction vehicles adapted to perform automated robotic handling, and existing component systems modified to enable rigid handling and automated assembly. The characteristics of existing handling vehicles are established through experimentation and literature review, and requirements for handling existing component systems are established through analysis of commonly-used component types. Current positioning information creation and exchange processes are investigated through analysis of case studies. To facilitate automated assembly, construction vehicles require additional technologies to enable robotic control and component positioning, and existing flexible lifting equipment must be replaced with rigid handling systems. Existing connection designs must be modified or replaced, and existing digital frameworks adapted to provide assembly positioning and to store as-built information. The feasibility of implementing these changes has been considered through investigation of off-the-shelf products and practical solutions for each aspect. On the basis of the analysis in this thesis, the proposed approach to automated assembly is confirmed to be feasible overall, notwithstanding varying levels of viability for different technologies, varying levels of modifications required for different component types, and limitations of the scope of this investigation.