The Economics of Building Inspection and Testing by a Robotic Device

Inspection, testing, maintainance and civil engineering and building structures has been identified as a prime candidate for robotization. This paper examines the factors which will determine the economics of proposed robot for the inspection and testing of buildings. The perspectives of both the prospective developer of the device and its likely user are considered. From the developer's point of view, the viability of the proposal depends on the net present value of the cashflows associated with its development, marketing and sale over its projected shelf life. A measure of the economic incentive to the user is provided by the net present value of the costs and benefits which would arise from the acquisition and use of the device. Two particular problems were encountered in this front-end evaluation. Firstly, the more subsantial reasons for undertaking these types of projects are qualitative in nature. Secondly, for most of the quantifiable factors the data available are of veru limited quality. Spreadsheets models have been used to carry out sensitivity analysis of the uncertainity surrounding the data used. Other evaluation menthodologies have been proposed for the qualitative reasons.