Robotic Industrialization

The Cambridge Handbooks on Construction Robotics series focuses on the implementation of automation and robot technology to renew the construction industry and to arrest its declining productivity. The series is intended to give professionals, researchers, lecturers, and students basic conceptual and technical skills and implementation strategies to manage, research, or teach the implementation of advanced automation and robot technology–based processes and technologies in construction. Currently, the implementation of modern developments in product structures (modularity and design for manufacturing), organizational strategies (just in time, just in sequence, and pulling production), and informational aspects (computer-aided design/manufacturing and computer-integrated manufacturing) are lagging because of the lack of modern integrated machine technology in construction. The Cambridge Handbooks on Construction Robotics books discuss progress in robot systems theory and demonstrate their integration using real systematic applications and projections for off-site as well as on-site building production. In this volume, concepts, technologies, and developments in the field of buildingcomponent manufacturing – based on concrete, brick, wood, and steel as building materials and on large-scale prefabrication, which holds the potential to deliver complex, customized components and products – are introduced and discussed. Robotic industrialization refers to the transformation of parts and low-level components into higher-level components, modules, and finally building systems by highly mechanized, automated, or robot-supported industrial settings in structured off-site environments. Components and modules are (in modular building product structures) independent building blocks that are delivered by suppliers to original equipment manufacturers such as large-scale prefabrication companies or automated/robotic on-site factories. In particular, Japanese large-scale prefabrication companies have altered the building structures, manufacturing processes, and organizational structures significantly to be able to assemble in their factories high-level components and modules from Tier-1 suppliers into customized buildings by heavily utilizing robotic technology in combination with automated logistics and production lines.