Editorial on Robotics in Building and Infrastructure

Abstract

Advanced robotics systems have been around for a while now. There have been many opportunities for them to be widely utilized in the contemporary building and infrastructure construction sectors. Several applications, such as advanced construction machinery, sensorsupported construction environments, and automatic planning and optimization are being developed and investigated by researchers around the world. At the same time, Building Information Modelling (BIM) is becoming a dominant management approach in the field of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC). BIM contains necessary information and well-organized data schema enabling personnel to retrieve sufficient information at the right time and in the right place. In order to use BIM for handling uncertainties on the construction site, integration with advanced robotics systems is necessary for cutting out rework and waste during construction.Robotics technologies help assess a situation and enable a rapid response to the resulting information. They can also further facilitate BIM usage at the construction stage of projects. The utilization of robotics approaches means that certain types of conventional construction operations can be fully automated and optimized beforehand, such as routine fabricating processes, material dispatching, and operation guidance. Sensors mounted in the field can also retrieve information so corresponding personnel can react to dynamic situations quickly, taking advantage of increasing computational power for sensing, data analysis and interpretation. Such approaches help site managers make more accurate decisions about dynamic construction processes in the field.As a preliminary stage of integration of such systems, the research in this special issue is intended to give readers a flavour of how BIM is influencing state-of-the-art buildings and infrastructure, and help inspire potential ideas and opportunities about how advanced robotics systems can be integrated with BIM. Researchers focusing on robotics technologies can seek inspiration in how to utilize intelligent equipment, sensing devices, and automatic methods to further facilitate modern AEC, aligning with BIM technologies in the near future.