A new pilot just put a robot out front of a major construction challenge in Massachusetts: the building of a new headquarters for a major life sciences company. The robot’s assignment was to draw the all-important layout grid at the job site, a kind of paint-by-numbers life-sized blue print that’s an integral part of the building process.

The robot, by Rugged Robotics, can autonomously mark fully coordinated designs directly on concrete floors. The process, called field layout, is ordinarily done by people in much the same way it has been for the last hundred years, using tape measures, chalk-lines, and surveying equipment to manually mark the location of walls and mechanical systems. In an industry marked by project overruns and blown budgets, this critical step is often a source of future downstream errors that cost time and money.

The Rugged Robotics pilot was conducted via construction company Consigli, which is building the new headquarters for Sanofi, one of MA’s largest life science employers.

“At Consigli, our leadership and technology teams are always looking for ways to make construction projects more accurate and efficient, and maximize the allocation of resources on each site,” said Jack Moran, Assoc. AIA, LEED AP and Consigli’s director of VDC and Integrated Services. “We see technology as a way to support our workforce and to meet the construction demands of the future. Rugged Robotics proved its value with an automated tool that exceeded our expectations and worked in synergy with our team.”

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