FREMONT, CA: Technavio, a market research company, states in a recent report that heavy/civil construction occupies the largest segment of the global construction robot market. The report also states that the global construction robots market is expected to ship 738 units by 2020 at CAGR of over 5%.

The Technavio report titled ‘Global Construction Robots Market 2016-2020’ includes up to date analysis and forecasts for various application segments, including heavy/civil construction, building construction, and nuclear dismantling and demolition. The growth in the global construction robot market is due to the rapid-urbanization such as construction of mega structures and high quality infrastructures.

According to the report, Heavy/civil construction occupies the largest segment (61.90%) in the global construction robots market, by application 2015. The second largest is building construction (26.63%), followed by nuclear dismantling and demolition (2.55%) and other applications (6.35%).

Global construction robots market for heavy/civil construction

The global construction robot market for heavy/civil construction is estimated to have shipped 351 units in 2015. The construction robots are used for applications such as earth moving, forepoling and heavy drilling. Drilling robots are used in the mining industry and also used to install telephone cables and electricity wires under river beds.

The Earth moving robots are controlledby remotes via wireless communication. They comprise of a set of components that are installed onto conventional backhoes to allow unmanned operations. The robots have cameras and wireless imaging systems that allow controlling the robots from control rooms. The maximum distance that can be between the construction site and control room is two kilometers.

Global construction robots market for building construction

The global construction robots market for building construction shipped an estimated 151 units in 2015. The construction robots categorized under building construction perform tasks such as material shaping (brick laying, breaking, cutting, compacting, and machining), material handling, assembly (structural joining in high-rise steel buildings) and concreting.

Construction robots consist of concrete panel handling and brick-laying robots at construction sites and programmable cranes that are also used to construct prefabricated building elements such as walls, ceilings, stairways, and room cells in factory sites and perform structural joining at the construction location.

Global construction robots market for nuclear dismantling and demolition

The global construction robot market for nuclear dismantling and demolition shipped an estimated 29 units in 2015. Construction robots are used for decommissioning and deactivating nuclear, military, chemical, and other hazardous facilities. They consist of an on-board hydraulic manipulator with a demolition tool mounted at the end. These robots are operated by a remote to deactivate, decommission, and carry out post-accidental activities. These robots can be operated from a safe distance.

The robots can perform disassembly of equipment and devices; collecting and handling secondary waste from decontamination; cutting, drilling, milling, and other physical processes for dismantling structures; collecting decontaminated debris, fluids, and wastes; surface processing such as applying sealing materials; and Probing for contamination in the facility.

With these construction robots, the decommissioning costs for nuclear power stations and disposal of nuclear wastes is reducing due to the advances in technology and standardization of techniques for dismantling and demolishing such facilities.

“Companies use construction robots to increase precision, ease working condition, and to protect workers from risks and disasters at construction sites. Remote-controlled unmanned construction machines, and semi-automated robots are slated to play a valuable role in performing construction work in this economically large sector,” says Bharath Kanniappan, one of Technavio’s lead analysts for robotics research.