Toward a Science of Autonomy for Physical Systems: Construction

Abstract: Today, ensuring and improving safety, productivity, quality, and sustainability in construction, operation, and maintenance of national civil infrastructure systems through advances in robotics and automation is a national imperative. By "national civil infrastructure" we refer to the 4.5M commercial buildings, 3.9M miles of public roads, 2M miles of oil and natural gas pipelines, 600K bridges, 190K cell phone towers, 120K miles of major railroads, 100K miles of levees, 84K dams, 50K miles of electrical power lines, 25K miles of commercially navigable waterways, and 5K public-use airports in the United States, all of which are critical to our national economy and society. By "ensuring and improving safety, productivity, quality, and sustainability" we mean to guarantee performance across the entire life cycle of civil infrastructure, from construction to operation and from maintenance to disposal. By "advances in robotics and automation" we mean innovative research and education that will provide tools for systematic and timely execution of construction, and also collection, analysis, visualization, and operational use of big data in built environments for project monitoring and control purposes. In the following, we discuss the current state of construction and operation of the national civil infrastructure systems in detail and present several opportunities for improvements through research and education on robotics and automation.