A driverless vehicle and a 145-foot-wide industrial construction robot have more in common than you’d think.
Jeremy Searock, co-founder of Advanced Construction Robotics, would know: He’s helped design both.
Autonomous vehicles use a suite of sensors like cameras, radar and lidar lasers to “see” the world around them. The cars then rely on artificial intelligence systems to make sense of the data and to detect when there are other cars at an intersection.
TyBot, the first autonomous robot Mr. Searock’s company has developed, can see a different kind of intersection — the grid-like structure of reinforcing steel, called rebar, on a bridge.
“That’s why it’s like an autonomous car,” Mr. Searock explained. “It sees the intersections, it knows where they are on its map, and it goes and figures out the pattern to take.”
Advanced Construction Robotics estimates that contractors using TyBot to tie rebar can save up to 50 percent on labor — freeing up workers for other tasks, bringing down the cost of a project and ultimately enhancing safety.
The Hampton-based startup with 21 employees is already gaining national attention from the construction industry for its recently patented robot.
Recently, the Associated General Contractors of America, an Arlington, Va.-based association that represents 26,000 firms in the construction industry, awarded the company with its inaugural AGC-Autodesk Innovation Award in conjunction with Brayman Construction, a Saxonburg-based contractor run by Advanced Construction Robotics’s president and co-founder Stephen Muck.
“There’s rising demand and a declining labor force and there are only two choices to meet work demand in the future: having more skilled workers come into the industry or you need to make the existing workers more productive,” Mr. Searock said.
“To do that, you use new technology.”
By 2023, the market for construction robots will be worth $166 million, according to Research and Markets, a Dublin, Ireland-based firm. That’s up from $76 million in 2018.
Ripe for disruption
Despite projected market growth, the construction robotics industry — often referred to as the last frontier in innovation — is “one of the few industries in the United States that hasn’t been disrupted.”
That’s according to Brian Turmail, vice president of public affairs and strategic initiatives at the Associated General Contractors of America.
And despite a plethora of jobs that pay $30 per hour or more, Mr. Turmail explained, there’s a labor crunch in most construction trades at a time when the national unemployment rate is at a historic low.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a 3.7 percent unemployment rate in September.
Construction firms can’t get the workers they need to fill jobs because, in part, there’s a stigma associated with blue-collar, manual labor.
Mr. Turmail sums it up like this: “Mommas don’t want their babies to grow up to be construction workers.”
Back-breaking labor
Most roads and bridges use two layers of rebar in a grid pattern to add structural integrity to the concrete surface. Each intersection of rebar must be fastened with plastic clips or plastic coated metal ties so that when concrete is eventually poured on top, the sections don’t wiggle out of place.
In September, you could see construction workers bending over sections of sea foam green rebar on the 10th Street Bridge, which connects the South Side to Downtown. The green color means the rebar is epoxy coated to prevent corrosion.
Workers usually tie the rebar intersections manually with a spool of wire and a pair of pliers or with a powered rebar tying tool. In either case, they’re bending over again and again.
“You’re walking over pieces of steel on an elevated space and there’s a risk of slipping and falling,” Mr. Turmail explained. “Even if you only fall onto the rebar, you’re landing your body onto pieces of hard steel and that runs the risk of bruising or breaking limbs.”
In February 2007, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health — a federal agency based in Washington, D.C. that makes recommendations for the prevention of work-related injury and illness — conducted a survey of ironworkers to evaluate their risk for developing back and hand injuries while hand-tying rebar.
The 250 reinforcing ironworkers studied spent 36 percent of their time, on average, positioning rebar during each shift, the report found.
The apple and the tree
The rebar-tying robot is just one automated solution that the company hopes to create for the construction industry.
TyBot is actually its own limited liability company separate from Advanced Construction Robotics, so that the product can eventually be sold off to another firm specializing in manufacturing, distribution and sales.
“ACR is an apple tree,” explained Mr. Muck. “TyBot is an apple.”
While the startup is manufacturing TyBot in-house and has a dedicated production manager, it’s “a big effort” to build the robots themselves.
The company is wrapping up work on its fifth TyBot. In April, two had been completed.
Plus, it’s expensive. TyBot has about $4 million in funding to play with.
“Our real interest and our real expertise that we want to continue to grow and expand is the ability to develop robots, not necessarily to build, manufacture and run the commercial business,” Mr. Muck said.
Advanced Construction Robotics has six contracts for the robots in place, including one in New Hampshire, one in Charlotte, N.C., and one in Pennsylvania. The company is in talks with at least 50 other individual contractors, Mr. Muck said, and at least 25 foreign companies have expressed interest.
Mr. Searock said the company plans to move to a new office with more space sometime soon — but don’t expect it to join the so-called “Robotics Row” in the Strip District, where self-driving startups, AI spinouts and robotics companies are becoming commonplace.
Rents are sky-high in the neighborhood more traditionally known for wholesale warehouses, and the size of Advanced Construction Robotics’ TyBot, itself, makes a move there cost prohibitive, he explained. The company would need more square footage to accommodate the robots, which are up to 145 feet in length at the widest point.
To keep hiring talent, though, Mr. Muck said he doesn’t want to get too far away from the Strip District and Lawrenceville. It’s just a matter of finding the right piece of real estate.
As for the company’s next product? Mum’s the word.
“Once we file the patent, we’ll be more than happy to tell you,” Mr. Muck said with a laugh. “Until the patents are filed, our patent counsel says, ‘Don’t talk about it.’”
Courtney Linder: clinder@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1707. Twitter: @LinderPG.
First Published: October 30, 2018, 12:00 p.m.