Japan’s Shimizu Tests Humanoid AI Robots on Site - Global Construction Review

‘Construction sites are probably one of the hardest environments you could ask an autonomous system to operate in’: Are autonomy and robotics gaining momentum in the industry?

In an era increasingly dominated by AI and automation, it’s still incredible just how much construction work remains manual. The contrast is most stark in data centers – facilities built to power cutting-edge technology, but whose delivery is generally still slowed down by major fragmentation and time-consuming manual tasks.One of the industry’s biggest challenges seems to be capturing and understanding what’s actually happening on a project. Pr…

Japan’s Shimizu tests humanoid AI robots on site - Global Construction Review

Shimizu, one of Japan’s largest contractors, is conducting field trials of humanoid robots controlled by AI on construction sites in response to severe labour shortages and to boost productivity. The robots are tasked with inspecting sites with cameras and sensors. A humanoid robot was deployed at the Tokiwabashi Project, due to become the country’s tallest building. It can navigate the site at one metre per second with a camera following a p…