PCL and Pomerleau Construction, and Microsoft, Intel and Internet of Things (IoT) specialists Latium, have brought Boston Dynamics’ ‘Spot’ robot dog to Cadillac Fairview’s 160 Front Street project in Toronto.
Spot first appeared on a Pomerleau site in Montreal back in 2019, and now PCL will trial the ‘robot dog’ at two of its sites to further study how the technology can improve workflows.
While onsite, Spot will be fitted with several add-on technologies, all of which feed data into Latium’s ‘Job Site Insights’ smart construction platform.
Spot will sport 360-degree cameras, a Leica RTC360 laser scanner, Latium’s environmental air quality sensors, GPS sensors, and more.
Latium has enabled Spot’s data to be aggregated and displayed on a single tablet device.
This allows job site personnel to view real-time information and quickly respond to changing job site conditions and events. There’s a strong safety aspect too, with Spot able to get into dangerous or hard-to-reach spaces.
John Boktor, PCL’s senior manager, digital construction – business technology, said: “We are very interested to see how Spot performs autonomously and how exactly the data it collects while moving around our job-site will complement our daily site tasks at the work-face of construction.
“Collaborating with our technology partners and industry peers in an effort to enable technology further and more broadly in our industry is both very exciting and rewarding.”
Image credit: Boston Dynamics
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