Japanese construction company to build dam with automated robots
Japanese contractor Obayashi has started to build a dam almost entirely with robots, addressing the industry's labor shortage and aging workforce. The site of the trial project is a concrete dam in Mie Prefecture, on the southeast coast of Japan's main island. The 84-meter-high structure is slated for completion in March 2023.According to Nikkei, Obayashi has developed automated equipment to stack concrete layers to form the 334-meter-wide dam with virtually every process for constructing the dam involving some form of automation. Those process include the initial work of establishing the foundation, and pouring concrete to form the body, Nikkei reports. "By transferring expert techniques to machines, we're able to analyze what was once implicit knowledge," said Akira Naito, head of Obayashi's dam technology unit in a statement.
Japanese contractor Obayashi has started to build a dam almost entirely with robots, addressing the industry's labor shortage and aging workforce. The site of the trial project is a concrete dam in Mie Prefecture, on the southeast coast of Japan's main island. The 84-meter-high structure is slated for completion in March 2023.
According to Nikkei, Obayashi has developed automated equipment to stack concrete layers to form the 334-meter-wide dam with virtually every process for constructing the dam involving some form of automation. Those process include the initial work of establishing the foundation, and pouring concrete to form the body, Nikkei reports. "By transferring expert techniques to machines, we're able to analyze what was once implicit knowledge," said Akira Naito, head of Obayashi's dam technology unit in a statement.
