Integration of 4D BIM and Robot Task Planning: Creation and Flow of Construction-Related Information for Action-Level Simulation of Indoor Wall Frame Installation

An obstacle toward construction robotization is the lack of methods to plan robot operations within the entire construction planning process. Despite the strength in modeling construction site conditions, 4D BIM technologies cannot perform construction robot task planning considering the contexts of given work environments. To address this limitation, this study presents a framework that integrates 4D BIM and robot task planning, presents an information flow for the integration, and performs high-level robot task planning and detailed simulation. The framework uniquely incorporates a construction robot knowledge base that derives robotrelated modeling requirements to augment a 4D BIM model. Then, the 4D BIM model is converted into a robot simulation world where a robot performs a sequence of actions retrieving construction-related information. A case study focusing on the interior wall frame installation demonstrates the potential of systematic integration in achieving context-aware robot task planning and simulation in construction environments. Simulated a mobile robot's actions to install wall frames in a residential building 1. Introduction Rapid advancements in robotics technologies are making the utilization of robots for dangerous, tedious, and repetitive tasks more and more practical [1]. Unlike traditional industrial robots with fixed behaviors, modern robots with mobile platforms, sensors, and actuators can be programmed to perform given tasks intelligently adapting to changing work environments. Many sectors, including manufacturing [2], rescue [3], agriculture [4], and healthcare [5], are adopting robots to automate existing processes to achieve greater productivity and safety. Many construction tasks are repetitive and labor-intensive by nature [7,8], and thus robotization of these tasks can potentially address many chronic problems, such as stagnant productivity growth [9], labor shortage [10], and work-related diseases/fatalities [11]. A growing number of robotic solutions are introduced by academic studies [12,13] and industrial applications (excavation and leveling [14], marking of layout [15], rebar tying [16], and bricklaying [17,18]). With this trend, construction sites are expected to become crowded with robots and human workers in the near future exposing human workers to robot-related hazards, such as collisions, crushing, trapping, mechanical part accidents, etc. [19]. In order to utilize robots safely and effectively in congested construction environments, both high-level task planning and detailed simulation of construction robots should be performed as part of the entire construction planning. Despite the abundant studies on the coordination between human work crews [20,21], none of the prior studies incorporated robot operations into construction planning process.