Analyzing Schedule Dependency and Sequencing Changes for Robotic Construction Using Graph Analysis
Publication: Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering
Volume 37, Issue 1
Abstract
A construction schedule consists of activities and their sequencing. The impact of using robots in construction projects goes beyond a single activity, and affects an entire sequence of activities because of the difference between humans and robots in physical characteristics, work constraints, and work performance. The interdependency among construction activities complicates schedule change analysis through change propagation. This study developed a method for analyzing the impacts of using robots as alternative methods in construction projects. The study aimed to understand the impacts of employing robots in construction scheduling and analyzing schedule change propagation. We first summarize the typical construction sequence dependencies and their causes based on extant literature. Then, we analyze the impact of emerging or currently used site construction robots on these dependencies based on robots’ characteristics and work methods, as well as the potential propagation of changes through the activity dependency network using graph theory. A case study project is analyzed to compare the proposed use of robotic construction against the actual methods used in the project, and to understand the changes with and without robotics to analyze the sequence differences. The output of this research is a defined graph-based process for tracking changes in a network dependency schedule, and a clear definition of four types of schedule changes incurred by use of construction robotics in construction sequences.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Penn State Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS). This material is based on work supported by the NSF under Grant No. 1928626 and the Seed Grant from ICDS. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF and Penn State ICDS.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering
Volume 37 • Issue 1 • January 2023
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 21, 2022
Accepted: Jul 14, 2022
Published online: Sep 30, 2022
Published in print: Jan 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Feb 28, 2023
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