Building the Future: How cobots are revolutionizing the construction industry

Raise Robotics

In Short

Raise Robotics uses two powerful UR20 arms from Universal Robots as a platform for innovative onsite construction robots. The Raise system takes on repetitive and dangerous tasks, such as installing fasteners for glass façade panels on high-rise buildings. Harmon, the leading glazing company in the US, is an early adopter who has seen fast ROI with the robots, while improving worker safety and improvements in installation precision and consistency. The robots provide a 3X multiplier on manual labor and see payoff within one 13-floor project.

The Business Transformation

Raise Robotics is driven by a mission to move construction workers out of harm’s way. The company’s first robot takes over the task of installing glass panel brackets on high-rise buildings. To manually install these brackets, workers must wear extensive safety rigging as they hang off the side of the building upwards of a thousand feet in the air.

Raise Robotics

Industry Construction

Country USA

Number of Employees 10

Cobot used UR10e, UR20

Watch how Raise Robotics uses two powerful UR20 arms from Universal Robots as a platform for innovative onsite construction robots

Building the Future: How cobots are revolutionizing the construction industry

Safety always first in mind

In this compromised position, they need to accurately align, drill, and torque brackets in place to precise specifications. Not only is the job dangerous, unergonomic, and repetitive for the worker, there is also significant chance for injury if a tool or bracket falls to the ground below, where other workers may be.

Don Birmingham, general superintendent for Harmon, says, “Safety is always first in mind. If you can efficiently do a job and take all the safety risks out of it, I think any contractor would sign up for that. As far as the workers, I think they'd much rather be inside the handrail operating a robot than hanging off the edge of the building.”

Construction robot provides labor multiplier, with ROI in just one project

For façade brackets, the manual process typically requires two to four workers. In comparison, the Raise robot requires only one person to manage the robot per installation location.

“It's a 3X multiplier on traditional labor,” says Conley Oster, co-founder of Raise Robotics. That multiplier provides fast ROI for the robot, typically providing breakeven for the robot at about 13 floors based on monthly lease and amortizing the robot across the number of installations on each floor.

Improved quality and consistency

One of the biggest challenges on construction sites is making sure that parts are installed correctly every single time, over hundreds of thousands of installations. Adding to the safety advantages of the robot is its ability to install fasteners accurately, precisely, and consistently.

Oster says, “In manual installs, around 30% of all fasteners typically aren't installed in the right spot. Using a robot like ours in conjunction with total stations allows us to accurately place fasteners on the building's edge or within the building's core. We can install within plus or minus three sixteenths of an inch, which is far superior to what we've seen in manual installations.”

The Raise Robotics system also includes software that provides immediate insight and historical logs of on-site data. This gives exact torque values and alignment for every bracket in real time, as opposed to random quality inspections that are typically done a few times on each floor. Harmon had “as built” data, which allowed the team to adjust anchor positioning before the glass walls were installed. Birmingham says, “I think the most benefit we got was the reports of where the anchors were installed. The sooner we found any deviations beyond specs, the easier it was to eliminate them going forward.”

Watch how Raise Robotics uses two powerful UR20 arms from Universal Robots as a platform for innovative onsite construction robots

UR20 robots meet stringent demands for onsite construction robot

Raise mounts two UR20 robot arms on a mobile robot base for each of its construction robots. The small footprint and control boxes of the UR20 make them easy to integrate into a mobile application. Raise co-founder Gary Chen explains, “Because Universal Robots has done a great job of making their arms very power efficient, as well as making it easy to integrate into a DC power solution, we can directly connect our arms to the battery and have our robots operating fully, wirelessly on a construction site.”

Built-in force/torque sensors offer precise control

IP65 rating allows robots to take on tough tasks in extreme conditions

The UR20’s IP65 rating unlocks potential and provides confidence for Raise and its customers in using the robots even in inclement environments including dust and rain, as well as extreme temperatures. Raise Robotics has run the robot successfully from 20°F below zero up to 120°F.

UR support helps drive start-up success

To develop its system, Raise used a wide variety of resources from UR, from online technical documentation, to support via myUR, as well as the forums on both the Universal Robots website as well as their GitHub.

“Support from UR has been fantastic,” says Oster. “Any issues that we ran into or any questions that we had early on, we had a dedicated applications engineer from UR that was able to help us. The UR community and forums were extremely helpful to us as well. We were always able to come up with a solution in a timely manner.”

I believe if there were more robots on the job site, there'd be less risk of any injuries

Don Birmingham, general superintendent, Harmon

Key value drivers:

Improved safety for workers at 1000+ foot elevation

Payoff within one 13-floor project

3X multiplier on manual labor

Precise fastener torque and placement within +/- 3/16th inch

Accessible real-time data capture

Tasks solved by collaborative robots:

Accurately aligns, drills, and torques brackets in high-precision process

Automation challenges solved:

Protects workers from dangerous high-rise construction tasks

Improves accuracy and consistency in bracket installation

Provides real-time data to ensure quality

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