A Preliminary Review of Current Research Studies on Human Robot Collaboration in Construction Industry

The development of robotics technology has created lots of potential for the construction industry. Due to unique features of construction sites (e.g., unstructured and dynamically changing), robots require human assistance to perform various tasks. Thus, human robot collaboration (HRC) has become an essential question when applying robots to the construction industry. However, it is not clear about the current research status within the HRC context in the construction industry. This paper conducted a preliminary review of the existing studies focusing on HRC in the construction industry. The research objectives/environment, HRC methods applied, construction tasks and robots involved, technologies applied, and factors affecting adoption of robotics in the construction industry from the existing research studies were summarized. It is envisioned that the outcomes of the paper could assist both researchers and industrial practitioners with appreciating the research and practice frontier of HRC in the construction industry.