Construction Layout Robots

  • 29 October 2022
  • 7 replies
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Userlevel 5
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Does anyone have experience with construction robots? 

My company may be interested in purchasing one of the following robots below. 

These construction robots use printer ink with the robot aligning itself to control points and works off CAD drawings to create layout for walls and MEP work points on slabs.

Dusty Robotics-DUSTY

HP SitePrint. Funny to see HP make more than just printers lol.

 


7 replies

Userlevel 5
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Feedback would be greatly appreciated as I would be using these robots in the field. I’m narrowing down options between the Dusty from Dusty Robotics and HP SitePrint construction layout robots as these robots have the best technical support teams it looks like.

Userlevel 7

I would be VERY interested to see if there are others in the Community who have actually used or are using these robots.

Personally, I’ve only tested Dusty Robotics -- never even got to fully using it. It seemed easy to use and they have an awesome team.

I have no experience at all with HP SitePrint so I can’t speak to them.

Anyone else have input on either of these two (or perhaps other robots not discussed here)?

Userlevel 6
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We looked into robots for a few things; layout and site photo capture among them. This feedback is really in regards to high rise concrete buildings on a 2 or 3 day cycle so may or may not be relevant for you. 

For layout - I forget the company we were looking at, but we did a trial run and in a perfect condition where we kicked everyone off the floor and broom swept it, it worked great.  Just getting that setup wasn’t really realistic for us so I don’t believe we use this on any projects.  Also as a GC we don’t really do layout so we needed to get the carpenter to buy in and that was really difficult for us.

For photo capturing we were looking at Boston Dynamics spot and that was very promising.  Basically just having the camera attached to the robot, using a program like OpenSpace or even just cataloging the videos separately.  Programing a walk path and the robot is pretty good at obstacle detection and getting around minor issues.  Only issue we had with that was cost.  Cheaper to have an intern or entry level person do walks than setup the robot, but I was really pumped about the potential of how well that could work.

Userlevel 5
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@Gerard O'Donnell  Thanks for the great robot story! At my company we would most likely use a construction layout robot for a large medical center or institutional projects. Glad I could hear a story about this.

It must be difficult to kick everyone off the the floor just for the robot to sweep through the job. The high rental cost I am aware of but with correct timing we would be able to pull this off. The obstacle detection capabilities are definitely the first thing I will look at also. 

My Insta360 One X2 Camera attached to the robot could also help us back track where obstacles were previously. The One X2 camera would show our field laborers small minor areas that were missed. I would just have to add field notes indicating the obstructed areas.

Userlevel 6
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@KevLyons  If the space is well lit enough you could always have the robot work after hours and get its work done with no one there.  Especially with flex work arrangements would be really interesting for like as an example 

7-3:30 construction work

3:30-4:30 robot sweep

5-6 remote PM reviews and creates field notes or a punchlist for the construction crew to hit the next day

Userlevel 5
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@Gerard O'Donnell Very good point and lighting shouldn't be an issue. Better to do a robot sweep after Union labor hours with temp lighting on.

Userlevel 7
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We have sat in on a Dusty demo and I have seen a few other layout robots. The price point was just too high for us.

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