Automation and robotics in Construction

This work presents a tool for analysing the figurative structure of architectural facades. The procedure begins by singling out the elementary shapes which make up the facade image; it detects and identifies them as “area objects”, even if present in combination in virtual or mental form and groups them into classes of equal objects. A second step is the analysis of the inner structure of the classes: equidistant, arithmetical and geometrical sequences, or alternate distances are distinguished. The procedure ends by singling out the symmetries which structure the facade image and displaying them, pointing out their implied hierarchy through a thickness differentiation.

We would like to invite you to join this exciting new project as a chapter contributor. Since this is a textbook, a great deal of this chapter entails a survey on the topic under the paradigm of cyber-physical systems, what can be done onboard and remotely, the distributed nature of the system and some exercises on futurology (anticipating trends can shed some light on upcoming designs). IET will bring great visibility to your work. You are welcome to suggest another topic/chapter title if you feel it would be more suitable. Each chapter should be around 20-25 pages each and can be submitted as a Word or Latex File. The IET will send you additional information (formatting, permission form, etc.) with the contributor's agreement once you have agreed to contribute to the book. Visit http:// www.theiet.org/resources/author-hub/books/index.cfm to get all information you need as a contributor to an IET research-level book. Each book is expected to have a total number of 500 printed pages (based on approximately 550 words per page with a 20% allowance for figures and tables). We have included a tentative schedule and list of topics below. If this is something you would consider, please send me the title of your chapter, a short description/abstract of the chapter content, and your full contact details. We will expect original content and new results for this book. You can, of course, reuse published material but the percentage of material reuse for the chapter should be less than 40%. The IET will run a piracy software on the full manuscript to control that you are including original material and will reject chapters who contain a large amount of already-published material so please do take this into consideration.

This study explores the relationship between density, built form typologies and their respective environmental quality in terms of Sky View Factor (SVF) distribution on both the facade and ground levels by examining representative residential precincts and urban street blocks. The findings demonstrate that the performances in terms of facade and ground level SVF distribution vary across cases under study. The differences in the variations of their SVF performances as a result of the increase of density suggest that alternative urban block typologies can be explored, when targeting at higher density development, that provide different spatial configurations and an equally good or better SVF performance than that of some of the existing urban block and precinct typologies.

Automatic door is an automated movable barrier installed in the entry of a room or building to restrict
access, provide ease of opening a door or provide visual privacy. As a result of enhanced civilization and
modernization, the human nature demands more comfort to his life. The man seeks ways to do things
easily and which saves time. So thus, the automatic gates are one of the examples that human nature
invent to bring comfort and ease in its daily life. To this end, we model and design an automatic sliding
door with a room light control system to provide the mentioned needs. This was achieved by considering
some factors such as economy, availability of components and research materials, efficiency,
compatibility and portability and also durability in the design process. The performance of the system
after test met design specifications. This system works on the principle of breaking an infrared beam of
light, sensed by a photodiode. It consists of two transmitting infrared diodes and two receiving photodiodes.
The first one is for someone coming in and the second one is for someone going out of the room.
The photodiodes are connected to comparators, which give a lower output when the beam is broken and
high output when transmitting normally. The general operation of the work and performance is
dependent on the presence of an intruder entering through the door and how close he/she is in closer to
the door. The door is meant to open automatically but in a case where there is no power supply trying to
force the door open would damage the mechanical control system of the unit. The overall work was
implemented with a constructed work, tested working and perfectly functional.

At the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, the advent of digitalization, innovative technologies and materials, and new construction techniques have begun transforming the way that infrastructure, real estate, and other built assets can be designed, constructed, and operated in order to create a more attractive, energy-efficient, comfortable, affordable, safe, and sustainable built environment. Developments in materials and cutting-edge technologies (such as artificial intelligence, robotics, nanotechnology, 3D printing, and biotechnology) have finally started to move the construction towards a new era. Massive changes are occurring as a result of the possibilities created by big data and the Internet of Things, along with the technological advances that are driving down the cost of sensors, data storage, and computer services. Construction 4.0: Advanced Technology, Tools and Materials for the Digital Transformation of the Construction Industry presents a thorough review of developments in materials, emerging trends, cutting-edge technologies, and strategies in the fields of smart building design, construction, and operation, providing the reader with a comprehensive guideline on how to exploit the new possibilities offered by the digital revolution. It will be an essential reference resource for academic researchers, material scientists, and civil engineers, undergraduate and graduate students, and other professionals working in the fields of smart eco-efficient construction and cutting-edge technologies applied to construction.

In 2015, the construction had the highest rate of fatalities among all industries in the United States. Unsafe operation of construction equipment is one of the main causes of fatal incidents. Operation, management and interactions between construction equipment and construction crews should be thoroughly regulated to minimize the risk of fatal incidents on job sites. While use of most traditional construction equipment is regulated, the construction industry has struggled with regulating new, innovative and smart equipment such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) that have recently been introduced to construction job sites. In this paper, collision avoidance and spatial safety theories in construction are discussed. The bases of these theories are extended to UAV operation in order to establish the first known theory on safe use and operation of UAVs in construction. Also, basic principles of UAV flights are discussed. By applying the basic principles of UAV flights and construction spatial safety theories, a UAV flight simulator in construction environments has been developed in Unity game engine. The flight simulator is designed for UAV pilots, construction managers and safety managers, and enables users to fly a UAV within a simulated environment extracted from a BIM model. This UAV flight simulator is tested in a case study of a building currently under construction. This simulator can be used to assess UAV pilots’ capabilities, test the risks of UAV flights in any construction environment, and UAV safe flight path planning.

The construction industry demands effective construction organisations, efficient construction processes and innovative construction techniques to effectively compete under increasing globalisation, market competition and technological advancements in the twenty-first century. The problems associated with construction such as decreasing quality and productivity, labour shortages, occupational safety, and inferior working conditions have opened the possibility of more revolutionary solutions within the industry. One of the prospective options is in the implementation of innovative technologies in construction such as automation and robotics is through the Industrialised Building System (IBS), which has the potential to improve the industry in terms of productivity, safety and quality. This is the review paper describe on the potential used of Automation and Robotics through Industrialised Building System as well as to adopt the concept of Industrialisation towards the better future of Malaysian Construction Industry.

Construction progress monitoring has been perceived as one of the key factors that prompt the achievement of a construction project. However, assessing the progress is time consuming, costly and obliges specialized personnel to reduce disagreements and approximate the actual performance to the original plan as close as possible. Image processing is a promising method that has been developed for automated monitoring of construction projects. It has attracted increasing attention for progress monitoring, quality assurance and work space analyses. Nonetheless, remarkable drawbacks still remain in image processing, particularly for outdoor environment such as construction progress monitoring. The principle downside of image processing goes back to the image resolution. Ambient lightning condition significantly affects the image quality which does affect the accuracy of data, extracted from related images. Much research strives to reduce the level of errors for data extraction but so far none has been able to deliver complete satisfactory and reliable result. In this research a novel approach based on thermal image analysis is presented. The new method consists of three phases: First, collecting the thermal and original images by utilizing Infrared-Camera. Second, estimating the position of captured images by the use of wireless sensor network implemented in the work space. Finally, the 3D plan will be updated automatically in the Building Information Modeling (BIM) software. The preliminary experimental results from an actual concrete building construction site show the feasibility of inferring the actual state of progress by the use of thermal images to overcome the limitation of vision monitoring. 

AUTOMATED CONSTRUCTION PROGRESS MONITORING USING THERMAL IMAGES AND WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/275024236_AUTOMATED_CONSTRUCTION_PROGRESS_MONITORING_USING_THERMAL_IMAGES_AND_WIRELESS_SENSOR_NETWORKS#share [accessed Sep 11, 2015].

Contour crafting (CC) is a advanced building printing technology being researched by Behrokh Khoshnevis of the University of Southern California's  in the Viterbi School of Engineering that uses a computer-controlled crane to build homes rapidly and efficiently with substantially less manual labor. It was originally designed as a method to construct molds for industrial parts. Khoshnevis decided to adapt the technology for rapid home construction as a way to rebuild homes after natural disasters, like the devastating earthquakes. Using a quick-setting, concrete-like material, contour crafting forms the walls of houses layer by layer until floors and ceilings are set in place by the crane. This great concept calls for the insertion of structural components, air conditioning, plumbing, wiring, utilities, and even consumer devices like audiovisual systems as the layers are built. Automation has been very advanced technology in manufacturing sector but the growth of automation in construction sector has been quite slow. Conventional methods of manufacturing automation cannot construct the giant structures with all internal features. This is the reason behind the slow rate of growth in construction automation. Contour Crafting has a great potential in automated construction of whole structures as well as its sub-components. Using this process, a single house or a colony of houses, each with possibly different designs may be automatically constructed in a single run. This research paper also deals with the application of CC in building habitats on other planets. CC will most probably be one of the very few feasible approaches for building structures on other planets, such as Moon and Mars, which are being targeted for human colonization. Contour Crafting is an emerging technology that uses robotics to construct free form building structures. The research paper aimed at providing a systematic solution for improving the overall Contour Crafting system efficiency in custom-designed buildings. The paper also deals with some practical construction issues.

Components press formed from layered or laminated metallic materials have wide engineering application in aerospace, automobile, electrical, electronic and process industries. High strength ferrous metals are widely used in automobile industries for utilization of its high strength to weight ratio. Such high strength metals offer poor formability. Formability of such metals can be improved by applying a layer of metal having higher formability. This paper deals with springback behavior of a laminated stainless steel and aluminum in
V bending. Investigation of bending characteristics like thickness ratio and bending angles of sheet before/after springback is carried out in this paper. First part of this paper is on numerical analysis for springback prediction of laminated sheet. In second part, experiments are performed for different cases on V bending machine. The experimental results show that springback of sheet metal laminate is greatly affected
by relative position of strong/weak layers and thickness ratio of each layer.

The construction industry, for many decades, has been underperforming in terms of the success of project delivery. Construction delays have become typical of many construction projects leading to lawsuits, project termination, and ultimately dissatisfied stakeholders. Experts have highlighted the lack of adoption of modern technologies as a cause of underproductivity. Nevertheless, the construction industry has an opportunity to tackle many of its woes through Construction 4.0, driven by enabling digital technologies such as machine learning. Consequently, this paper describes a framework based on the application of machine learning for delay mitigation in construction projects. The key areas identified for machine learning application include "cost estimation", "duration estimation", and "delay risk assessment". The developed framework is based on the CRISP-DM graphical framework. Relevant data were obtained to implement the framework in the three key areas identified, and satisfactory results were obtained. The machine learning methods considered include Multi Linear Regression Analysis, K-Nearest Neighbours, Artificial Neural Networks, Support Vector Machines, and Ensemble methods. Finally, interviews with professional experts were carried out to validate the developed framework in terms of its applicability, appropriateness, practicality, and reliability. The main contribution of this research is in its conceptualization and validation of a framework as a problem-solving strategy to mitigate construction delays. The study emphasized the cross-disciplinary campaign of the modern construction industry and the potential of machine learning in solving construction problems.

Construction progress monitoring has been perceived as one of the key factors that prompt the achievement of a construction project. However, assessing the progress is time consuming, costly and obliges specialized personnel to reduce disagreements and approximate the actual performance to the original plan as close as possible. Image processing is a promising method that has been developed for automated monitoring of construction projects. It has attracted increasing attention for progress monitoring, quality assurance and work space analyses. Nonetheless, remarkable drawbacks still remain in image processing, particularly for outdoor environment such as construction progress monitoring. The principle downside of image processing goes back to the image resolution. Ambient lightning condition significantly affects the image quality which does affect the accuracy of data, extracted from related images. Much research strives to reduce the level of errors for data extraction but so far...