Autonomous Robotic Construction Site Digitalization

Halter AG, Swiss-Mile Robotics AG, and ETH Zurich propose a digitalization service for indoor construction sites. By equipping autonomous wheeled-legged robots with reality capture technology, we provide regular insights into site progress, reducing overall risks and costs.

Digital twins—virtual replicas of real-world environments—are becoming indispensable for efficient and sustainable planning, monitoring, and documentation of construction sites, buildings, and entire cities. In the construction industry, regular site documentation is essential for monitoring, inspection, and reporting purposes. Construction companies require regular data from their construction sites to detect planning errors, avoid rework, optimize efficiency, ensure quality, and track progress to minimize risks and costs of operation consequently.

Addressing this need for indoor monitoring, Halter AG (Halter), Swiss-Mile Robotics AG (SMR), and ETH's Robotic Systems Lab (RSL) propose an autonomous digitalization service powered by mobile robots. Our innovative technology seeks to allow regular monitoring at a reduced cost while improving map quality. The core of our proposed solution revolves around a wheeled-legged robot equipped with reality capture devices. This robot captures images and point cloud data, which are then streamed to off-the-shelf analytics platforms that provide the statistics and further data necessary for construction companies.

One of the primary objectives is to develop an autonomy module adept at navigating construction sites that are dynamic and undergo constant changes. Furthermore, our autonomous data collection system will analyze the data on the go to ensure the quality of the collected data for consistent digital twins. The project aims to develop a complete robotic digitalization framework integrable with existing digital twin processing platforms, thus paving the way for robotic reality capture future in the construction industry.