Continuous Construction Process Monitoring with the Help of Artificial Intelligence

The dynamic global upward trend in construction will continue over the coming decades. The main drivers are population explosion and dramatically rapid urbanization. More than 1.7 billion people worldwide are under the age of 20; most of them were born in rural areas and will soon move to urban centers. All these people, who aspire to a life based on Western standards, need housing and infrastructure, businesses, offices and production facilities, food, consumables, water and energy supplies, as well as schools, universities, and hospitals. More than the total volume of construction that took place during the industrialization period from 1800 to around 1950, i.e., in 150 years, must now be added in just a few years, in addition to the already costly activities of maintaining existing buildings.

The high level of innovation in the construction sector and the major technical advances, particularly in the field of construction, enable the realization of technically highly sophisticated buildings of all kinds, which is an important component of urbanization. The overall economic contribution of research and development in this area cannot be underestimated. Despite all this evident progress, the construction sector is characterized by manufacturing whose productivity development lags far behind other economic sectors.

KO-MIT stands for “continuous construction process monitoring with the help of artificial intelligence.” The aim of this project is to make a fundamental contribution to increasing productivity in construction production. The aim is to close the gap in the relevant data basis for short-cycle construction production control (shop floor) in one sub-area. The research project focuses on the upstream data flow in special civil engineering and on the production status detection of special civil engineering machines. However, the findings will be adaptable and transferable to all areas of construction production in a very general way. In this specific application, a fully automated, digital status monitoring system for the production process is being developed. Pattern recognition using artificial intelligence will be used to correlate characteristic patterns of sensor data with machine statuses.

This research project is part of the Free State of Bavaria's “Information and Communication Technology” R&D program.