Construction automation facility gets green light

A team of experts across seven universities, led by Monash University’s structural engineering professor, Yu Bai, will work together to develop a facility aimed at advancing construction automation in Australia.

The facility will feature an adaptive design and will play host to a team of collaborative robotics in an interactive environment with the ultimate aim of achieving automated prefabrication, assembly and building.

Monash University hopes the project will transform the current labour-intensive construction industry to one that uses highly automated and accurate prefabrication processes that yield significant benefits to the economy and worker safety.

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The initiative was made possible through a grant from the Australian Government’s Linkage, Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) program.

Professor Bai said many industries, such as manufacturing and transport, had adopted automated practices to speed up, optimise, and economise production. However, the construction industry was lagging and not quite yet taking advantage of such technological advancements.

“Robotic technology has made significant progress in a number of industry domains in the last several years and construction can benefit from this advancement,” he said.

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

“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.”

This facility builds upon extensive research by Professor Bai and his colleagues on modular construction and composites for construction. When combined with robotic technology, this can result in faster, more precise, lower cost and higher-quality production outcomes, the university said.

The facility will cover structural design for manufacturing and assembly, lightweight structural materials and connections, construction planning and safety, sensing and monitoring, building information modelling and digital asset management, optimisation of structures and assembly, automation and informatics, and robotic systems and human-robot interaction.

“We’re grateful to the Australia Government’s LIEF program for its support behind our vision to benefit the building industry so it is safer for workers, more environmentally sustainable and, above all, more affordable for consumers,” Professor Bai added.