Robots Install High-Rise Fasteners Safely

A Minnesota-based glazing firm is using a robotic system to install high-rise glass panel bracket fasteners, improving worker safety as well as consistency and precision, Interesting Engineering reports.
Typically construction workers need extensive safety rigging to install glass panel brackets up to 1,000 feet high.
“If you can efficiently do a job and take all the safety risks out of it, I think any contractor would sign up for that,” stated Harmon Inc. general superintendent Don Birmingham. “As far as the workers, I think they’d much rather be inside the handrail operating a robot than hanging off the edge of the building.”
Raise Robotics uses two powerful UR20 arms from Universal Robots as a platform for onsite construction robots. The Raise system takes on repetitive and dangerous tasks, such as installing fasteners for glass façade panels on high-rise buildings.
The leading glazing company in the U.S., Harmon has seen fast ROI with the robots, while improving worker safety and improvements in installation, according to Interesting Engineering. The robots provide a 3X multiplier on manual labor, reportedly achieving payoff within one 13-floor project.
For facade brackets, the manual process typically requires two to four workers. In comparison, the Raise robot requires only one person to manage the robot per installation location.
In manual installs, around 30% of all fasteners typically are installed in the wrong spot. Using the Raise robot allows the company to accurately place fasteners on the building’s edge or within the building’s core.
“We can install within plus or minus three sixteenths of an inch, which is far superior to what we’ve seen in manual installations,” stated Conley Oster, co-founder of Raise Robotics.
The system also includes software that provides immediate insight and historical logs of on-site data. This gives exact torque values and alignment for every bracket in real-time, as opposed to random quality inspections that are typically done a few times on each floor.
There are no comments at the moment, do you want to add one?
Write a comment