Name: Why AI could be the construction industry’s answer to a workforce shortage
Uploaded: 2023-12-20
Duration: 5 min 28 s
Description: Companies like Canvas and Dusty Robotics are using artificial intelligence and robots to speed up construction when a decreasing workforce can’t meet demand.

Companies like Canvas and Dusty Robotics are using artificial intelligence and robots to speed up construction when a decreasing workforce can’t meet demand. 

Why AI could be the construction industry’s answer to a workforce shortage

Tech

Companies like Canvas and Dusty Robotics are using artificial intelligence and robots to speed up construction when a decreasing workforce can’t meet demand.

Construction as an industry is like the biggest industry on the planet. It's also one of the least automated. Step one is I've picked a space step 50 is I have now built the space, there's a million moving parts. So we started leveraging robotics and A I in order to automate some of the things that have previously been done by people. You know what we've come from in the industry in terms of how things get built and how fast things get built and how complicated things are. Now, everything is a lot more interactive. Everyone's being tasked with building more with less. The challenge for construction is actually to make construction more efficient by adopting more technology and automation. Typically today, what you'd see is big plans being printed on big sheets of paper uh handed off to someone in the field, he gets down on his hands and knees and uses measuring tape and string to mark out the locations of where all of those things are going to get built inside the building. It used to be an architect, put a piece of paper together actual hard piece of paper, an engineer got it. Drew on top of it, that then went back to a contractor who built it. And if they had questions, they picked up the phone or they mailed you something that came to you three days later. So today buildings are designed in software and 95% of the information in those digital models never gets used to build, it disappears. And that's because the process of actually laying out that information in the field is so painful. It requires someone on their hands and knees marking out each and every detail on the robot. It will follow it. And so dusty is automating this information flow by taking those digital models and printing them out in the field. Basically a little box with wheels on it that has a printer on the front and it takes those digital models and it dries itself around the floor. And as it goes, it leaves a trail of ink behind that ink marks out the locations where all the walls, the pipes, plumbing, the electrical fixtures, where everything gets installed inside that building. Dusty's field printer guarantees 1/16 of an inch accuracy to the digital run. It used to be, you drew a duct, you assumed there was some level of tolerance that you had to account for, for other trades. You gave yourself an extra couple of inches. Then the next trade came in, they gave themselves an extra couple of inches. Then by the time you were done, your shilling was a foot and a half lower than it needed to be. When we need to produce more with the workers. We have, we make better tools for the people that we have. You know, a prime example of this is the excavator. We used to dig holes with a shovel. And now all the workers who are digging, the shovels are driving excavators. These types of machinery that help improve productivity, improve jobs exist in the exteriors of spaces. We really haven't seen them penetrate the interiors. And so canvas basically makes tools for installing materials on these spaces. And our first product is in drywall finishing. Everybody has mostly seen the kind of person lift where you have a wheel base where a platform extends up and down on a lift that lifts a person. Instead of putting a person on that, we put a robot arm and a whole suite of sensors that allow us to sense and understand the space that we're working in because of the precision of the machine. It allows us to apply material more all at once as opposed to many iterative steps, which is what you'll see in drywall finishing. And so that actually shortens the schedule of the chain. The owner who wants their building finished and wants to start getting people into it can do that more quickly. Two people are retiring for every one person that enters the industry at a time where we need to build twice as much over the next 40 years. How are we going to build sustainably? How are we going to build affordably? How are we going to be able to grow our companies? Given that it's becoming harder and harder to find uh the labor that we need? You know, I think is a marketing problem because I think construction, once you actually get into it, it actually is a stem career robotics is actually just magnifying that that effect by creating more jobs that are robot operator jobs, robot technician jobs, I'm really excited about the opportunity to attract new talent to the industry and give them, you know, skills that are going to be broadly applicable for their futures going forward. And I think that's going to make construction once again, an incredibly attractive place to have a career. There's certainly growth to be done in the in the world of technology in this industry. In A I A lot of people are afraid that it's gonna replace what we do or it's gonna replace the, the installers or it's gonna replace a labor union. And I just, I don't ever, I don't ever see that happening. I don't see it getting to that point, the experts have just gotten better and refined their skills and input their experience in the right places. The machine is a tool that the worker is operating. And so we use a I more to understand our environment and to interface with the worker so that we can get good instruction from the workers. Robotics has the potential to bring people into the construction industry that would have never considered a job in construction. Because suddenly when you're using a robot, you don't need to be super strong. And that makes construction a lot more appealing to a wider variety of people. And that's really important because one of the challenges in construction is actually hiring the workforce of the future.