Project Outline: Audrey Ryan, Jeremy Sulak, Tyler Woyshner

Description of project:

Each member of our team has chosen a different hazardous environment to research in regards to the dangers of performing maintenance in that setting.  Three different hazards, repairing facades of tall buildings, hazardous waste disposal and repair, and falls of heavy items, are identified as possible places where robots can improve the process to minimize the danger to humans and increase the economic efficiency.  Each hazard will look into the relevant technologies and materials, how it can be achieved, progress made so far, what else can be done to make it a possibility.

Why chosen:

Collectively we felt inspired through discussions in class about the future of robotics and how they can be used to improve the safety within the building industry.  From this we wanted to see what has been done so far to mitigate these hazards and explore the future of what is possible.

Relation to Intelligent Buildings:

With the increasing number of high-rise and large-scale buildings, modern buildings are becoming intelligent, and are incurring high construction costs and requiring careful maintenance. Maintenance for buildings significantly depends on human labor, unlike other construction processes that are gradually being automated. Accidents may produce very high social and economic losses. Additionally, the reliability of the manual inspection approach is questionable because human judgement is always subjective. Consequently, the poor inspection result will cause either excessive or inadequate repairing work that is undesirable in term of costing and safety. To address this problem, herein, a robotic building maintenance system using multi-robot concepts, can improve the efficiency and economic feasibility of the process. 

Challenges:

Not a lot of progress has been made in relation to building industry in terms of using robots for maintenance; instead the majority of robots have been used towards actual construction of the buildings.  A challenge for us will be to find information related to the future of robotics, specifically for maintenance.  

The Future of Buildings: How Technology will Change Construction and Design

Outline

Intro/Challenges of maintenance/types of hazardous environments

Repairing facades of tall buildings

• ·         Explanation of hazard
• ·         Relevant technology and materials
• ·         How can it be achieved
• ·         Progress made so far
• ·         Work left to do to make it possible

Hazardous waste disposal and repair  i.e. asbestos etc

• ·         Explanation of hazard
• ·         Relevant technology and materials
• ·         How can it be achieved
• ·         Progress made so far
• ·         Work left to do to make it possible

Falls of heavy items

• ·         Explanation of hazard
• ·         Relevant technology and materials
• ·         How can it be achieved
• ·         Progress made so far
• ·         Work left to do to make it possible

Conclusion

Comments to other posts:

Dave, I found your project plan for exploring the future application of 3-D printing to building construction fascinating. Establishing the criteria for materials and technology that are crucial to the success of such large scale printing will definitely be key in implementing this in real-life industry and I'm interested to see your take on it. Creating examples in Revit/SketchUp of building models that fit those criteria is a great way to demonstrate the feasibility of the technology. I also like that you are taking into consideration the potential social and economics benefits of 3-D printed buildings. It's obvious that you have put a lot of thought into your topic and I really look forward to seeing the final project.

Teddy Bruder, I found your idea for your project to be very interesting. As an avid music downloader, I know all about how it is becmoing more popular in today's world to download music illegally instead of paying for it.  This is not only unethical, but it is insulting to the musical artists who are not getting the proper repirations for their hard work.  This can be directly related to 3-D printers and pirating.  There is a lot of excitement about what 3-D printers are going to be able to do, and it would be very unfortunate to have to deal with pirating. I am curious to see if you end up forming any opinions into any future laws that may be enacted to combat this inevitable event and how they would be enforced.  Congress always seems to be a little behind the times when it comes to applying legislation to technology.  

References:

Bing L. Luk, Louis K. P. Liu and Arthur A. Collie (2007). Climbing Service Robots for Improving Safety in Building Maintenance Industry, Bioinspiration and Robotics Walking and Climbing Robots, Maki K. Habib (Ed.), ISBN: 978-3-902613-15-8, InTech.


Lee, Seunghoon, Min-Sung Kang, and Chang-Soo Han. "Sensor Based Motion Planning and Estimation of High_rise Building Façade Maintenance Robot." IJPEM 13.12 (2012): 2127-134. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.