Innovative technologies for infrastructure construction and maintenance through collaborative robots based on an open design approach

Abstract

In this paper, the socio-economic problems facing the construction industry in Japan are presented, including the COVID19 pandemic, an aging population, aging infrastructure, and severe natural disasters, and a project to tackle the problem is introduced. This project, called ‘Collaborative robots for adaptation of diverse environments and innovation of infrastructure construction,’ is a sub-project of the Moonshot project organized by the Cabinet Office in Japan. The key approach to proceeding with this project is an ‘open design’ for robotics. Based on this approach, three aspects of the research plans are introduced: (1) robots that flexibly adapt to the environment, (2) Many-modal AI for environment evaluation, and (3) Physical AI and dynamic collaboration of multi-robots.