Visualizing Material on Site for Machines and Humans: A Step toward an Autonomous Construction Site

Sammanfattning: The construction industry has not seen the same growth in productivity as e.g. the manufacturing- and automobile industry. This is largely due to the ease of implementing automation and robotics in the latter mentioned industries. Now more than before when the urbanization rate is increasing, there is a strong need in increasing the efficiency of the construction industry. That is why the research questions of this thesis work involves finding a complementary solution that will help autonomous construction machines operate in a dynamic construction site. The aim is permeated by two visions. The first one being to have autonomous construction machines collaborating with humans in the most remote places in the world. The second vision is that multiple smaller construction machines is more beneficial. Meaning a few machine breakdowns would not halt the entire construction process. During the research work, using the design research methodology and the innovation process, data showed that a construction site is very dynamic and complex. Having a change in factors such as size of construction site, number of involved stakeholders, location of the construction site, and time phase heavily affects the complexity of the site. Throughout the three case studies there were different characteristics, but there was a pattern. All the mentioned factors played a huge role in what needs expressed by the interviewees. The more complex a site was, the more there was a need to organize the material, personnel and machine flow. Therefore, the final solution is to decentralize the information flow of the construction site. Meaning that all humans, machines and material on site is to communicate its information. The suggested solution is the usage of a tag using GPS and Wi-Fi to communicate location and the necessary information. Thus, when attaching the tag onto a material, the workers and the machine will know of its information. The analogy is that when the implementation of autonomous machines is up to pace, the sites need to be prepared with all the errors and issues that might come with it. Since the autonomous construction machines will be collaborating with humans, it means that the issues expressed today will reappear in the future. Also, since the implementation of autonomy and robotics has been slow for the construction industry, there is a clear need of a complementary solution to speed up the process. By decentralizing the construction site and implementing tags on each interesting point, the once complex and changing construction site, will turn into a fully digitized infrastructure.