At 75 pounds and 1.5 feet tall, DPR and Trimble’s latest innovation, Project Lion, is doing big things with small technology. The two firms have been working on what they call a “laybot,” an autonomous layout robot that marks lines on slabs for interior construction. The robot can already mark slabs at twice the rate of experienced drywallers but project managers are aiming for a rate of over 6X as fast as human workers. The robot is driven by signals from a nearby robotic-total-station (RTS) loaded with the appropriate BIM files.
Casale says the pilot grew out of DPR’s work on the University of California, San Francisco, Mission Bay medical center, a one-million-sq-ft hospital with 180 beds. “We were self-performing the drywall on the project, so we had a great opportunity to see how we could leverage BIM to make ourselves more efficient,” Casale notes.
Click here to learn more about this robotic technology being used in construction
