Perception-and-action system for humanoid robot task execution in construction

Abstract

Humanoid robots, with their human-like shape and multi-tasking capabilities, are well-aligned with human-dominated workplaces, like those in civil and construction engineering, where they could collaborate with human workers or autonomously perform physically demanding and hazardous tasks. Despite this promise, limited research has explored how to endow these robots with the practical capabilities needed to perform construction tasks. To this end, this study proposes a novel perception-and-action system that enables humanoid robots to learn and perform construction tasks from worker demonstrations. This system contains two deep networks: Humanoid-PoseNet, which extracts human postures and translates them into mechanically feasible poses for a humanoid robot; and Humanoid-ActionNet, which learns robot-executable actions based on these translated poses. Experimental results demonstrate that the humanoid robot reliably executed eight construction-related actions, achieving an average motion-tracking error of 82.45 mm MPJPE (Mean Per Joint Position Error). This work provides an early step toward deploying humanoid collaborators in construction.