Robotic automation technologies in construction: A review

Robot technology is a remarkably interdisciplinary research area, one that can be employed in various industrial fields as well as higher value-added fields. The construction industry, on the other hand, has been known as one of the most difficult research fields to apply robotic schemes. Therefore, applying robot technologies in the construction industry is quite a challenging topic. This paper aims to introduce the progress of automated robotic systems in construction fields, namely with respect to construction robots. While construction robots have a very wide range of application depending on the huge market size of the construction industry, there still exist a lot of problems such as highly risky working environment and inefficiency due to the labor intensive characteristic. In order to solve these problems, a variety of construction robots have been developed and in this paper the current state of the robotic system for construction works and the vision of future robot technology in the construction field are introduced.