Scientists at Auburn University in Alabama are using a robotic dog for teaching and researching construction-site technology.

Called Mac, the Boston Dynamics-designed, four-legged agile robot – purchased by the McWhorter School of Building Science (BSCI) in the College of Architecture, Design & Construction (CADC) – weighs 36kg and stands almost a metre tall.

Purchased this spring by BSCI, Mac has already been used on construction sites and in classrooms at Auburn. Eric Wetzel, an assistant professor of building science, said the robot had been used in research experiments on active construction sites, including the Tony & Libba Rane Culinary Science Center, conducting autonomous laser scans of rooms to capture completion percentage and provide 3D imaging useful to project managers and educators alike.

“We’re trying to use Mac in all three phases of the university mission – research, service and teaching,” said Wetzel. “This is a very novel technology, especially on construction sites. Basically, any research question we develop is untested because we’ve never had autonomous robots on jobsites like we have now. We are looking at different applications and payloads and continue to explore a number of different research questions.”

Mac’s mobility and autonomous mode enable the robot to enter and scan a room on its own while avoiding obstacles and providing detailed data that can be studied and directly applied to projects. Mac’s autonomous lidar scans can free up personnel such as field engineers to handle other tasks on a jobsite.

“Historically, lidar scans are a very time-consuming effort for a field engineer, so by autonomously sending Mac out to execute those scans, it alleviates that time the field engineer would need to do it,” said Wetzel. “The fact that Mac is a quadruped, allows it to go up and down stairs, deal with rough terrain at a construction site and step over and avoid things. This type of robot is the first that can actively be deployed on a construction site without getting stuck in mud or blocked by things sitting on the ground.”

Lidar scans help researchers and construction managers monitor progress of a project or site with high-quality, dynamic images.

“It’s a newer form of advanced technology that allows you to capture spatial data of a site or structure thoroughly and accurately,” said Junshan Liu, an associate professor in the McWhorter School of Building Science and co-author with Wetzel on a comparative analysis report involving Mac. “It’s a really comprehensive capture, down to two millimetres in detail, and you’re able to get a snapshot of a building as it is at that moment. That documentation is really important for historical buildings and also for new construction. Lidar scanning work is labour-intense that requires a commitment from a lot of people, so having Mac is great because we could just send him to a job site programmed to do image capturing at night when there’s no one working. That can really improve productivity and, for circumstances that may be hazardous or dangerous, we can send Mac to places people shouldn’t go because they’re unsafe.”

Mac is part of a revolution of sorts in the construction world, with robotics being used more and more with each passing year as technology continues to improve.

“Within the last ten years, we’ve seen this explosion in construction robotics,” said Wetzel. “Mac is representative of this shift, and it’s partially because the tech is good enough that it can now be useful on construction sites.”

Jake Lovelace, an innovation and operations tech specialist from local construction firm Brasfield & Gorrie, added: “I believe we are at the beginning of a construction renaissance. The industry is seeing rapid growth of technology that is transforming traditional manual workflows into data-driven autonomous processes. While hands in the dirt will always be essential, digital innovators are being given an important seat at the table to manage the ever-growing amount of data needed to build a successful project. The task is not an easy one. A typical job site is a very dynamic environment and host to many hazardous activities, making robotic automation extremely difficult to achieve. But I believe this is why innovators are naturally drawn to the space; they enjoy the challenge.”

Robotics has been used on construction sites in recent years for things such as tying rebar, finishing drywall or even laying brick.

“This robot has only been commercially available for a little over year, and Boston Dynamics released it with non-specific applications in mind,” Wetzel said. “So, we’re just filling in the gaps of what it could be doing on a job site. Because Mac has a programmable interface, we can write programmes to get it to do things it’s not inherently designed to do. For example, we are currently working with the RFID Lab at Auburn to develop a follow protocol in which Mac will follow a human around and execute actions without the need for the handheld device used to control the robot in manual mode. This human-robot collaboration, sometimes referred to as cobot, is applicable to construction and beyond.”

Wetzel said he and his team hoped to use Mac to collect data, conduct research that was shared with Boston Dynamics to improve future generations of its robots and publish papers about their discoveries made with the young technology.

“We’re in the first frontier of this, because there’s nothing out there that’s currently published,” Wetzel said. “Current literature is largely researchers conjecturing about applications, but now that a few of us have robots, we’re running experiments for the first time.”

Even though Mac and its payloads carried a six-figure price tag, Wetzel said the potential returns were priceless.

“It’s really hard to put a return-on-investment figure on a robot that can potentially get students interested in building science and construction, publishing really novel information and having expertise that people in the industry and other universities respect,” Wetzel said. “What’s the RoI on having students who can actually control, feel and see a robot in construction, as opposed to just being taught about it in a classroom? These things are not really measurable by monetary standards.”

From a research standpoint, having Mac out in the field at Auburn allows Boston Dynamics and others the chance to process never-before-seen data that can be crucial to the technology’s evolution.

“We’re all sharing, collaborating and giving feedback, and that information gets back to Boston Dynamics,” Wetzel said.