Automation and robotics for construction

The potential for automated real‐time data acquisition, process control and robotics for remote, large‐scale field operations, such as those on construction engineering projects, is addressed. Classifications of technologies for automation and robotics in such operations include hard‐wired instrumentation, remote sensing, analog and digital telecommunications, optical (laser, infrared and fiber‐optic) data transmission, monitoring via microcomputer‐based instrument control and data recording, on‐site process control for fixed plants, partial or fully automatic control of mobile equipment, fixed‐based manipulators, mobile robots, communications between on‐site computers and automated machinery, electronic ranging and detection, and video‐image pattern recognition. Combining selected technologies with microcomputer‐based software could facilitate analysis, design and control decision‐making, and could provide a means of coordinating various discrete automated components or machines that must work together t...