Robotic Bricklayer: a multi-robot system for sand-lime blocks masonry

With the constant technological advancements, we are assisting to the progressive robotization of many labor-intensive and repetitive human activities. In their first historical phase, robots were mostly confined in the production lines of factories. Currently, robots are “leaving” the factories to assist humans in an increasing number of activities, ranging from logistics and transportation to house services (eg cleaning and mowing lawns), and agriculture, just to mention a few. In this thesis, we focus on the use of robotics in civil construction. Surprisingly, although the construction of buildings is a very relevant human activity, robots are still a very rare sight on construction sites, and if present, their role is typically limited to logistics (eg transportation of pallets) or collection of information (eg drones for topographical surveys). At the current stage, only a few working robotic platforms for automatic construction have been developed around the world and their diffusion is quite limited. We believe that the current scarce presence and success of robots in construction are mainly due to the specificity of the construction work environment and actions (eg adverse and unstructured environment, need of maneuvering in limited space, complexity of the construction actions and their low level of standardization, high weight of the construction material, etc.). This context is very different from the industrial context in which robots have been developed and requires the development of methodologies that are beyond “classical robotics”. The main goal of this thesis is to develop a novel methodology able to make robots more common in construction sites. To this end, we will design and develop an innovative multi-robot concept for automatic bricklaying with sand-lime bricks. Sand-lime bricks for large civil construction are typically in the 100 kg range. The use of these blocks is very common in many civil constructions thanks to their mechanical and insolation characteristics. Currently, they are ...