Using Actual Industrial Robot Manipulators with Construction Tasks

Actual industrial robot manipulators are sophisticated machines that work essentially as position and motion controllers. They have sufficiently powerful programming environments and good communication devices that, considering also their ability to perform human-like tasks, make them a typical case of flexible manufacturing equipment. Force control can also be used if no more than passive and/or indirect force control is required. This is roughly the actual state-of-the-art of industrial robot manipulators. Is this useful or interesting for construction tasks? In this paper we review the main characteristics of actual manipulators, in a way to show that technically the actual state-of-the-art is sufficient to cope with the requirements of many of the construction tasks. Beside of that, and using a typical industrial manipulator, we present a software interface that can be used to program, monitor and control those tasks. The main applications of the presented software are with off-site construction tasks, although on-site tasks can also benefit from using it. Off-site tasks include manufacturing prefabricated panels, adding ceramic covers to other prefabricated panels, polishing, painting, window assembly, etc.