New buildings in Singapore may soon have a high-tech building inspector rolling up to their door steps armed with laser scanners and high-tech cameras that can spot the tiniest cracks and defects.
This new building inspector is a robot invented by scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), co-developed with Singapore’s national industrial developer JTC and local start-up CtrlWorks.
Named QuicaBot – short for Quality Inspection and Assessment Robot – it can move autonomously to scan a room in minutes, using high-tech cameras and laser scanners to pick up building defects like cracks and uneven surfaces.
A few of these robots working together will make inspecting a building a breeze. The robots can upload 3D data of the scans to the cloud and inform the human operator, who can then inspect critical and complex defects.
“Visual inspection of a new building is an intensive effort that takes two inspectors, so we have designed a robot to assist a human inspector to do his job in about half the time, saving precious time and manpower, and with great accuracy and consistency,” explained Prof Kayacan.