Ditchmen • NUCA of Florida Ditchmen • November 2017 | Page 9
know, for the safety of the
community.
In this dusty arena, a startup
called Built Robotics is
testing what it thinks is the
future of construction: the
autonomous track loader.
Give it coordinates, tell it what
size the hole should be, hit
enter, and it tears off and digs
the thing with impressive
accuracy.
Really, this tractor is not
unlike a self-driving car. It
uses lidar—that is, it spews
lasers—to see the world
directly in front of it. The
difference being, this lidar is
specially designed to work
in the high-vibration, high-
impact world of construction
excavation. The lasers also
allow the robot to measure
the amount of material it’s
scooped up.
But the ATL has one big
advantage over self-driving
cars: It’s scooting around a
relatively static, structured
environment. Roads, they’re
chaos. A job site isn’t exactly
peaceful, but at least the
robot is working in a confined
space. So to position the
robot, Built Robotics uses
what’s known as augmented
GPS, which combines an on-
site base station and satellites
to produce location data
down to the centimeter.
Still, the construction
robots have actual work to
do. “The thing that we’re
doing which is different and
that’s a little bit harder than
self-driving cars is we’re
actually manipulating our
environment,” says Noah
Ready-Campbell, founder
and CEO of Built Robotics.
“If a car is changing the
environment around it, then
something’s gone really
wrong.”
Specifically, the robot
excavates holes for the
foundations of buildings. Say
you want a 30-foot-by-40-
foot excavation at a depth of
two or three feet. Depending
on the equipment and
conditions, that’d take a crew
of humans one to three days
to complete. Built Robotics
claims its machine can hit
about the same pace—plus
the robot never gets hurt
or tired and can potentially
run 24 hours a day. (A robot
can, of course, hurt people,
though the robot has a
collision avoidance system in
place. And for the time being
a supervisor stands there
with a big red and orange kill
switch in hand.)
Built Robotics is still honing
the tech, but says it has
already done small pilot
jobs in the Bay Area. “I
actually think we can see
this technology deployed a
lot more quickly and I think
you’re probably going start
to see autonomy make
an impact in construction
even before you’re doing
transportation,” says Ready-
Campbell.
report trouble finding skilled
labor. Roboticizing the
industry wherever possible—
repetitive tasks like digging
and painting—could ease
this strain. Agriculture has
the same labor problem
right now, and is increasingly
turning to robots to fill the
gaps.
Will that kill certain jobs?
Yes. But like pretty much any
robotics company whose
tech is designed to replace
humans, Built Robotics says
that the resulting increase
in productivity will grow the
industry and shift laborers
into new jobs.
The roboticization of the
construction industry is also
good news for America’s
horrifically bad infrastructure.
That increased productivity
could make repairs easier
and cheaper. Take, for
instance, robots that inspect
and automatically repair
pipes without humans having
to rip the pipes out of the
ground.
In the end, the job of a robot
is to make life for humans
easier, safer, and more
productive. And so one busy
little robot digs its way toward
an automated future, one
scoop at a time.
• • •
Which would not be
unwelcome. The construction
industry has a labor shortage;
a survey this year from the US
Chamber of Commerce found
that 60 percent of contractors
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