The International Association for Automation and Robotics in Construction
Publications / 1992 Proceedings of the 9th ISARC, Tokyo, Japan
A Quantitative Method to Evaluate Automated Constructability
Before many construction activities may be automated, operations must be designed that are within the capabilities of the machinery. This can be accomplished by modification of either the construction operations or the actual design. There are several qualitative methods to evaluate automated constructability, or the amenability that construction tasks have to automation , and identify which construction tasks could be automated. Although these methods have assisted in identifying construction tasks with potential for automation, they are largely ineffective in quantifying the characteristics of a design that impact task requirements and amenability to automation. A quantitative method is needed to evaluate and measure automated constructability. This paper presents a quantitative method evaluate the automated constructability of a design and assist in Designing for Construction Automation.This method analyses design characteristics through a process of reverse construction and converts them into construction requirements. The construction requirements contain motion, accuracy, stability, and environmental characteristics of the construction task. These characteristics are converted into a task manifold chart and a task performance environment chart, which comprise the automated constructability criteria. Certain patterns of automated constructability criteria indicate automated constructability and technical feasibility for automation in the performance of that task. This paper describes the development of a quantitative method to evaluate automated constructability.