J Intell Robot Syst (2015) 79:347–350

DOI 10.1007/s10846-015-0252-9

GUEST EDITORIAL

Automation and Robotics in Construction and Civil

Engineering
Mi Jeong Kim · Hung-Lin Chi · Xiangyu Wang ·
Lieyun Ding

Published online: 8 August 2015

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

1 Introduction can be found in robotic control, sensing, vision, local-

isation, mapping, and planning modules.
The construction industry plays a significant influen- The research in this special issue is expected to
tial role in national and global economies. The indus- give the readers a look into how innovate management
try makes up 10 % of GDP in developed countries, and strategies are influencing state-of-the-art building and
more than 25 % in developing countries. However, the infrastructure construction, and helping inspire indus-
degree of automation in construction is far less than in try or research to integrate automation and robotic
other industries, such as manufacturing. This results in technologies into their own practices
both poor productivity and risky working conditions. This special issue specifically focuses on research
Automation and robotics applications are opportuni- and case studies that demonstrate how automation
ties to solve such issues in construction industry. Due and robotics technologies and tools can be applied
to the rapid development of computer hardware and in the construction of buildings and infrastructure.
software in the past few decades, major improvements The submitted papers identify one or multiple prob-
lems where the use of automation, robotic technolo-
gies, or advanced management techniques can be
M. J. Kim applied to provide innovative solutions This pub-
Department of Housing and Interior Design,
Kyung Hee University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
lication contains a plethora of new studies and
e-mail: mijeongkim@khu.ac.kr research that aspire to mark critical milestones in the
industry.
H.-L. Chi · X. Wang After rigorous blind reviews by the construction
Australasian Joint Research Centre for Building
Information Modelling (BIM), Curtin University,
management experts and scientific committee, eigh-
Bentley, Australia teen papers are included in this special issue; and
e-mail: hung-lin.chi@curtin.edu.au these papers can be organized into the following four
categories:
X. Wang ()
International Scholar, Department of Housing and Interior
Design, Kyung Hee University, Seoul, South Korea
e-mail: xiangyu.wang@curtin.edu.au 2 Automation and Robotics in Surveying Processes
L. Ding
In current construction practices, the use of surveying
Huazhong University of Science & Technology,
Wuhan, China processes is an essential procedure that can be per-
e-mail: dly@hust.edu.cn formed with automation and robotics technologies if
348 J Intell Robot Syst (2015) 79:347–350

the appropriate tools can be integrated. Various regu- discover uncertainties during construction, and help
lar surveying processes, such as point layout and soil the manager to make better re-planning decisions as
deformation monitoring, can benefit from innovative early as possible. The communications among such
hardware development, like robotics total stations and environment can be built online with the utilisation
laser scanning, which speed up the checking processes of cloud services. The research done by Cheng et al.
of the accuracy and quality of construction. In this spe- [18] introduced a Construction Quality Supervision
cial issue, the research topics cover civil excavation, Collaboration System (CQSCS), which is developed
tunnelling engineering and infrastructure monitoring. with integration of SaaS private cloud to strengthen
Zhao et al. [1] have identified the deformation char- construction quality supervision and management.
acteristics of buildings that are located in concave or
convex positions of the excavation, which help pre-
dict and prevent possible influences with surrounding 4 Risk and Safety Analysis and Education
buildings among similar excavation cases. In consider- in Construction
ing a safe, efficient, and inexpensive method to extract
spatial data of infrastructures, Dai and Zhu [2] have Zhong and Li [7] explored an opportunity for combin-
utilised a collecting of photographs from the infras- ing process and risk management by introducing an
tructure in question, and developed an approach to ontological and semantic approach. The risk-oriented
automate the object vertices and edges marking pro- ontology model has been proposed, and a case study
cesses. The improved process is essential to reducing on bored pile retaining wall system has been con-
the efforts of converting image data into a 3D geo- sidered. Other than safety protections and risk iden-
metric model, which represents a big step toward a tification in practice, safety education in promoting
fully automation of as-built information reconstruc- a safe and healthful working environment is neces-
tion processes. The tunnel boring machine (TBM) is sary as well. Le et al. [10] utilised virtual reality
cutting edge construction equipment for rapidly exca- technologies to create a virtual environment which
vation and is far safer comparing to conventional allows cooperative distributed safety learning, hazard
tunnelling methods. Mao et al. [3] utilised a robotic inspection, safety cognition, and active game-based
total station and innovative computing algorithms to learning. An evaluation has shown that such an educa-
monitor the alignment status of the TBM machine, tion platform can increase the learning effectiveness.
which avoids the problems with accuracy and tedious Zhang et al. [16] targeted the effects of metro tun-
calibration processes on using the conventional nelling with respect to surface road operation and
laser station. proposed a guideline for dynamic safety analysis over
time. It can be used as a decision tool for safety
assurance in a dynamic construction environment.
3 Automation in Construction Quality Control

Wang et al. [5] proposed an integrated system encap- 5 Innovation Management in Sustainable
sulating Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Construction
Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) for on-site
information collection and construction quality con- Fu et al. [4] identified a relationship between low
trol. It can help quality managers quickly and accu- carbon and the adoption of lean construction pro-
rately identify and manage defects; an improvement cess. By going through a case study and utilising
to time-consuming inspections that had to be per- Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the lean construction
formed at specific positions. By proposing a situa- process has been proved to reduce carbon emissions
tion awareness environment in the construction site, when compared to the original processes. Besides
Chi et al. [6] conducted several case studies to identify sustainability analysis at construction stage, it is
the potential usage of laser scanned as-built model in also important to aware of the energy consumption
quality assurance processes of Liquid and Gas (LNG) for indoor healthy space design. Kim et al. [12]
plant construction. Other tracking technologies, such utilised Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) technolo-
as RFID, GPS and so on, can also be used to rapidly gies, which derived from computer vision theorem,
J Intell Robot Syst (2015) 79:347–350 349

to simulate energy consumption awareness in a build- a domain-specific computer programming language

ing environment. They also identified key factors of for dealing with building information models in the
energy evaluations for developing health smart home early design phases. The design concept of the lan-
services. guage focuses on building objects and their associated
properties and relationship, which provides effective-
ness and ease of use without precise knowledge of the
6 Interface Management and Data Exchange conventional languages that are used in BIM software
in Construction development. In light of this development by Lee et
al. [13], a new column-beam structure called Green
Wang et al. [8] studied a method for structural model Frame (GF) was developed to further enhance the
transformation, and identified the representations and constructability, economy, and environmental friendli-
features between architectural and structural models. ness of construction. The dynamic erection system of
In response, an IFC-based software has been devel- the developed structure was established in this study
oped, and the test results show that data exchanging in response to the changes of on-site production and
between the building information models for differ- erection condition.
ent disciplines can be achieved. Luo and Gong [14] The special issue presents novelty, emerging, high-
utilised BIM to facilitate code checking and risk quality research concepts, and results on the state-
identification before the construction of deep founda- of-the-art construction and civil engineering advance-
tion projects. A case study is provided to prove that ment. All the proposed methods, models, technolo-
BIM-based code processes increased the efficiency gies, and applications can potentially contribute to
and precision of the code compliance checking and the current construction paradigm, or inspire further
risk identification. Other than data exchanging issues research with integration of automation and robotics
in current construction processes, various interfaces technologies. We look forward the better life that
among different disciplines also created a big gap for advanced integrations between the automation and
communication and cooperation. Ju and Ding [15] tar- construction industries will bring us in the near future.
geted on these issues and came up with a Web-based
Integrated Interface Management System (WIIMS)
for reducing interface conflicts and reworks. Some
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