Abstract
Advanced robotics systems have been around for a while now. There have been many opportunities for them to be widely utilized in the contemporary building and infrastructure construction sectors. Several applications, such as advanced construction machinery, sensor-supported construction environments, and automatic planning and optimization are being developed and investigated by researchers around the world. At the same time, Building Information Modelling (BIM) is becoming a dominant management approach in the field of Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC). BIM contains necessary information and well-organized data schema enabling personnel to retrieve sufficient information at the right time and in the right place. In order to use BIM for handling uncertainties on the construction site, integration with advanced robotics systems is necessary for cutting out rework and waste during construction.
Robotics technologies help assess a situation and enable a rapid response to the resulting information. They can also further facilitate BIM usage at the construction stage of projects. The utilization of robotics approaches means that certain types of conventional construction operations can be fully automated and optimized beforehand, such as routine fabricating processes, material dispatching, and operation guidance. Sensors mounted in the field can also retrieve information so corresponding personnel can react to dynamic situations quickly, taking advantage of increasing computational power for sensing, data analysis and interpretation. Such approaches help site managers make more accurate decisions about dynamic construction processes in the field.
As a preliminary stage of integration of such systems, the research in this special issue is intended to give readers a flavour of how BIM is influencing state-of-the-art buildings and infrastructure, and help inspire potential ideas and opportunities about how advanced robotics systems can be integrated with BIM. Researchers focusing on robotics technologies can seek inspiration in how to utilize intelligent equipment, sensing devices, and automatic methods to further facilitate modern AEC, aligning with BIM technologies in the near future.
After rigorous blind reviews by BIM experts and a scientific committee, 11 papers have been included in this special issue. These papers can be organized into the following four categories.
1. BIM benefits identification
A considerable amount of the research here focuses on how to quantify the benefits of BIM, presenting successful construction cases to demonstrate the usefulness of using BIM. In this special issue, Li et al. (2014a) identify the benefits of the dynamic query and statistical analysis of construction schedules, engineering, resources and costs. Their second contribution (Li et al., 2014b) shows five successful cases in Asia of large-scale public and financial projects that have adopted BIM in the design, construction and operation phases. The case studies investigated by Liu et al. (2014) also show that BIM can improve the design of infrastructure. These works all suggest that BIM can be an appropriate approach to improve the productivity of current construction.
2. BIM on construction Life-Cycle Management
One of the advantages of utilizing BIM is its unified management mechanism, which allows corresponding users to control the life cycle of a building or infrastructure based on the information that BIM can offer. Xu et al. (2014) report on a BIM-enabled framework in the life-cycle management of a construction project. As for conceptual modelling and representation of circulation within buildings, Lee and Kim (2014) provide a BIM-enabled approach which enables us to change the process of building design. In current construction projects Xu and Luo (2014) identify time wastage, mainly because of information loss from poor communication and information management. For solving communications and data transformation issues during every stage of construction, cloud-computing technologies can be taken into consideration, and these are examined in the work conducted by Ding and Xu (2014).
3. Sustainability evaluation by utilizing BIM
Other than the design of buildings and infrastructure, functionality evaluations are another of BIM's capabilities, taking environmental factors and sustainability into consideration. Wong et al. (2014) used a virtual prototyping approach to evaluate CO2 emission and hazard detection during construction. A 5D (3D + schedule + cost) visualization platform is introduced and simulations analysed. For sustainability assessment, research focusing on 6D (5D + sustainability/economic/environmental and social impacts) information is presented by Yung and Wang (2014), who develop a model for automatic assessment of buildings' life-cycle sustainability using BIM and enabling technologies.
4. Sensory information and optimization supporting BIM
Convincing research contributions are included that focus on preliminary studies to integrate robotic and optimization technologies with BIM in real construction cases. Zekavat and Bernold (2014) conducted field tests on setting up a wireless network environment in an earthmoving task. They collected the signal strength distribution of the network in the construction stage to see whether it was feasible to implement it practically to support BIM management. Sohn et al. (2014) utilize an optimization approach for robotic tower-crane selection and better support of design management. All these papers progressively contribute to realizing the use of robotic technologies with the integration of BIM.
This special issue disseminates original, high-quality research results on the BIM and robotics paradigms, models, technologies, and applications that can significantly contribute to the advancement of all aspects of AEC. Robotics and BIM technologies have shown strong development in the past, and we foresee an exciting future. We look forward to the better life that advanced integrations will bring us in the near future.