PBN Innovative Companies 2022
ARCHITECTURE, CONSTRUCTION & ENGINEERING: Gilbane Inc.
GILBANE INC., based in Providence, has recently benefited from extra “brains” and “eyes” at some of its construction sites – but not the human kind.
Last year, Gilbane began using a fleet of autonomous mobile robots to provide safety monitoring and track progress at job locations. The proprietary artificial intelligence platform – dubbed “Didge” – was developed with Boston-based Nextera Robotics.
“When we began the joint-venture partnership with Nextera, we weren’t exactly sure what we were going to build but we knew we wanted to start pushing the industry forward with the technology being used in the field,” Gilbane Operations Manager Eric Cushman said.
“Nextera Robotics has been a developer of advanced robotic automation and AI for many years in various industries. The company is now on a mission to address the needs of the construction industry which has been underserved and overlooked by automation experts for a long time. Didge is one of the solutions we are developing, and it represents an absolute foundation for many future job site automation solutions.” said Lana Graf, Nextera Robotics' founder and CEO.
At first, Gilbane put together an internal team to help guide development. Having the robot function autonomously without human supervision emerged as a main priority, Cushman said.
The robots obtain detailed visual data, allowing Gilbane to provide construction managers and clients with continuous progress updates remotely. This feature was especially beneficial when the company was dealing with COVID-19 pandemic-related restrictions, Cushman said, and it continues to be useful as precautions have eased.
The robot drives around and collects images using a 360-degree camera, Cushman said. Engineers and managers at the office then pull up those images and do a side-by-side comparison with Gilbane’s building information modeling on the computer to make sure work has been done accurately.
The Didge fleet currently includes 30 robots, both wheeled and tread versions. Each can drive for up to six hours and can park itself at the nearest base for recharging.
“During the course of a really busy day on a construction site, the robots are taking some of the burden off of our teams so that they can focus on other things,” Cushman said. “It frees them up to solve construction-related problems, as opposed to just project documenting.”
Cushman also said plans are in the works to make the technology available to other companies, both within and outside of the construction industry.
Didge is "supercharging" core functions of construction companies such as Gilbane, boosting the productivity of project management, providing a single source of truth for precise progress tracking, and simultaneously generating safety observations, utilizing AI to spot everything safe and unsafe on a job site.
“It was a perfect match with Gilbane’s leadership team - to support and create together, so there is no unnecessary functionality, no "show-off" features. It’s all done together with operations people for operations people utilizing the collective knowledge of an over 150-years-old industry veteran like Gilbane,” Graf said. “Thanks to Gilbane, we were supported on every step of our development journey. We exercised this approach over many years in multiple industries, it’s a "hack" that we learned during our times at [Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. We truly believe that smart and gradual involvement of robotics and AI on all levels of construction … increase safety and promote sustainable operations and a better environmental footprint for the entire industry.”
(ADDED grafs 4, 11 and 12 to include quotes from Lana Graf and clarify Nextera Robotics' involvement with Gilbane for this initiative; MINOR edits.)
