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China’s army of robotic rollers paving a road to future infrastructure
- Major infrastructure projects in China increasingly feature a growing workforce of construction robots
- They include autonomous rollers that can navigate construction sites and learn to improve their own performance
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Stephen Chenin Beijing
Some of the largest infrastructure projects under construction in China have started using robots.
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The projects include the world’s most challenging water diversion project, its tallest dam, a new futuristic city, and part of an expressway that the mainland Chinese government hopes will link Beijing to Taipei.
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been used widely in China’s infrastructure boom, including in the construction of the Baihetan, the world’s second-largest hydroelectric dam, which was built within four years. But the main purpose of the technology was to coordinate the activities of human workers. For decades, robots in the construction industry remained mostly just talk.
However, driven by disruptive technology such as 5G, huge investment in infrastructure and rising labour costs, a small but rapidly expanding army of construction robots has emerged in China.
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The use of robots is transforming China’s construction sector “from a labour-intensive industry to a knowledge-based hi-tech industry”, said Yan Junle, a senior civil engineer on the Hanjiang-to-Wei River valley water diversion project, in a paper published this month in domestic journal Construction Machinery Technology and Management.
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