Design of a Robotic Software Package for Modular Home Builder

This paper is sharing an on-going project about the design of a software package, tentatively coined as RS4B, for the builders of modularized construction. The shortage of labour resources and safety awareness issues have become the emerging problems in the construction industry. As the price of robots gradually decreases within these years, it is a promising direction to integrate robotic technology with the construction process to bring better productivity. However, shifting the long-term labour-based process to the robot-based process is not a simple task. Therefore, this research designed an assisted software package for filling the gap between the conventional process and robotic process. Four kinds of software were proposed in this research with their required functions and user interfaces design. With such an assisting tool, builders of modular home manufacturing will be able to extract information from the existing BIM model and transfer the information for the robot control.