A 3-D imaging robot could help construction workers make fewer mistakes

Erin Winickarchive page

January 25, 2018

Using lidar and a healthy dose of AI, a new robot can check that building projects are going to plan.

How it works: Once a construction site shuts down for the night, a small robot deployed by startup Doxel can get to work. Using lidar, it scans the site and uploads data to the cloud. There, deep-learning algorithms flag anything that deviates from building plans so that a manager can fix it the day after.

Why it matters: If errors aren’t noticed immediately on a work site, they can create compounding issues that take time and money to put right down the line. When a problem is solved instantly, the savings could be large.

The impact: A recent pilot test of the technology on an office building project increased labor productivity by 38 percent. The project as a whole came in 11 percent under budget.

Want to stay up to date on the future of work? Sign up for our newest newsletter, Clocking In!

Keep Reading

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.