JAPAN TO EMPLOY ROBOT BUILDERS
It takes half a million human hours to build a typical Tokyo skyscraper, and Japan’s labour crisis is making that a difficult feat. Now, though, Shimizu Corporation is developing robots to take care of as many of those hours as possible.
At the Robot Laboratory in Tokyo, Shimizu Corporation is testing three new machines. The Robo-Welder has a robotic arm that it uses to weld steel, and the Robo-Buddy is a multipurpose robot that can install ceiling panels and construct floors. The third robot, Robo-Carrier, can lug one ton of plasterboard to a designated location, using lasers to navigate and recognise obstacles. Unfortunately, building site regulations mean that Robo-Carrier can only work on sites at nights and during the weekend.
Robots are a feature in most types of manufacturing, with the automobile industry now using one robot for every five human workers. Yet construction has always been resistant to automation, largely because building sites are harder to navigate than factory floors. Although the robots will save thousands of human hours, they can only take on a small fraction of the work on a typical high-rise.
Shimizu’s robots will be deployed for the first time at a high-rise building site in Osaka this autumn, and they’ll start work on several large construction sites in Tokyo in 2019.