How robots could soon be building your new home

With the construction industry in crisis, more AI-powered machines are filling human vacancies than ever before, says Pranshu Verma. What can they do - and what are the risks?

- Pranshu Verma

Self-driving trench diggers. Drones that digitally recreate buildings. Roomba-like devices that outline where every beam on a floor should go. The construction site of the future is already here as homes, office buildings and industrial sites go up around the country. Robots that can lay bricks, put up drywall and tie rebar are pitching in at a time when the construction industry is in major flux.

Meanwhile, start-ups are pouring even more resources into the field, including building robots that survey and monitor, as well as heavy machinery that can operate on its own. They are hoping to automate a complicated field involving moving parts and vastly different sites and buildings. "Construction robots are a great example of how robotic technology is going to touch people's lives," says Matthew Johnson-Roberson, director of the robotics institute at Carnegie Mellon University. "Many construction jobs that exist today are now going to be alongside robots."

Fuelling the wave of innovation is a construction crisis. Building costs are rising, and hundreds of thousands of jobs remain unfilled. Those who are in the industry are getting older and working under sometimes deadly conditions. Amid that, federal money is pouring in to build better infrastructure. The confluence of factors has created a situation where more construction firms are turning to robots to automate work on job sites. Still, the flurry of activity has caused several workforce experts to become concerned that this could lead to job losses, or a situation where people who work alongside these robots are left working more quickly and in unsafe environments.