A prototype robot has been tested on a building site in Italy, working alongside construction workers, drilling, sanding, painting and helping carry heavy materials.

Called CONCERT, the robot is a platform that can perform a variety of tasks depending on the tool that its fitted with and the instructions it's given.

"It can be used as a collaborative platform, executing a physically demanding and repetitive construction task together with the human operators, but at the same time offers autonomous functionalities in which the platform can work alone inside the construction site with a minimal human supervision," the head of the Italian Institute of Technology's Humanoids & Human Centered Mechatronics Robotic Lab, Nikolaos Tsagarakis, told Reuters.

CONCERT's structure and robotic arm can be reconfigured depending on its next task, meaning it can be quickly repurposed for a wide range of scenarios in workspaces.

"The actual manipulation system of the robot, can be reconfigured to adjust its workspace settings, its payload capacity, and also the level of the forces that the system can apply to the environment during the execution of the construction task. At the same time it is offering full flexibility in integrating different kinds of tools that are dedicated to different construction tasks like drill tools, spraying, painting, sanding tools and other types of grippers that are needed for the transportation of construction material," Tsagarakis said.

The goal is a transition from the current general-purpose lower power robots to a new generation of robots that can safely collaborate with workers while safely applying human-scale forces on tasks that can change quickly in unstructured hazardous environments.

"In order to ensure the safety of the system it is having a great number of different sensors in the platform, starting from the vision, 3D LIDARS and cameras as well as ultrasonic sensors are used in order to detect the presence or the approach of human operators that maybe are working or moving close to the platform," Tsagarakis said.

The CONCERT team say they want to increase the number of tasks the robot can perform and are exploring the use of AI and machine learning to let the machine assess the quality of its own work.

(Production: Stuart McDill)