The aim of the topic group Construction Robotics is to develop a comprehensive network across academia and industry to support the robotization and digitalization of the construction sector in Europe. 

In 2022, with 12 mio. people being employed in the sector contributing to 10% of Europe’s total GDP (FIEC 2022), the construction sector is a huge industry. It is crucial to our society in terms of providing much needed infrastructure, housing and renovations. However, it is also well known that the construction sector in Europe as well as world-wide is highly dependent on manual labor in their onsite and offsite operations, thus exhibiting a very low degree of automation in comparison to other sectors. 

This is problematic for Europe, as the construction sector is under pressure, by an increasing lack of workforce and young talents, by the need to adapt operations to become more sustainable and responsible.

Given a higher degree of automation, it is expected that the sector’s productivity can be increased by 60-80% (McKinsey 2020).

Our topic group is addressing this gap with novel robotic and digital solutions for construction operations on- and offsite, to strengthen the productivity of the European construction sector, while making construction a safer, healthier and better sector to work in.

The topic group aims to bring together universities, RTOs, companies and organizations from across Europe that are interested to contribute and accelerate the robotization and digitalization of the construction sector. For researchers, suppliers, and policy makers, we want to offer the “go to” community to share, discuss and potentially initialize latest developments.