Robots and Construction: What’s Next?

In today’s world of self-driving cars and drone-based delivery services, it might not come as a surprise that that same technology is starting to find its way to construction sites. Before we go into any more detail about these innovations, it’s important to note that there’s no chance of us humans having to hand in our high-vis jackets anytime soon. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how technology is affecting our work and the way we do it.

The latest cyber-creation to come out of startup heaven, San Francisco, is a tractor that does all the work itself. Using lidar technology, which means that it uses lasers to see where it’s going. We can’t see the lasers shooting out from each side of the tractor, but they detect what is or is not in front/behind/either side of it and allow it to navigate tricky terrain.

The tractor, created by Built Robotics, is designed to excavate holes for building foundations. Currently, the Bobcat, as it’s known, can perform a 40x30x3 excavation in roughly the same time as a team of humans, with the main advantage being that the robot doesn’t get tired or hurt.

Away from the dirt and rubble of tractors and digging, there’s also rumblings of self-driving forklifts transitioning from concepts into reality. Pittsburgh-based company Seegrid have developed a unique technology that could soon see forklifts being able to navigate and operate without human assistance. The ‘vision’ technology will consist of a camera taking 3 photographs per second to create a detailed map of a required route, with a memory capable of storing 25 miles of travel paths.

However, while these forklifts will be able to weave through warehouses, humans will still be required to do the vertical lifting, picking and placing of items. So, at the moment, the self-driving forklift is little more than a delivery truck.

For the aforementioned benefits of a self-driving tractors and forklifts, they’re not going to be able to match the precision and on-the-fly decisions that humans can make – in the forklift’s case, one of the main features of a forklift truck is currently beyond its capabilities. There is no doubt that autonomous technology can help us in many areas of our working and personal lives, but there are plenty of nuances that robots will struggle to replicate.

For the foreseeable future, the skills and knowledge of people cannot be replicated or replaced to the required levels, and having a skilled team of determined, knowledgeable workers is far more valuable than a single self-driving tractor.

Health and Safety Training Ltd are proud to offer a huge range of training courses for candidates throughout the North East. Whether you would like to learn a new skill or you’d like to refresh some existing ones, we’ve got exactly what you need, so get in touch with us today.