In a new collaboration with Boston Dynamics, construction industry solution provider Zepth’s project management platform now offers users seamless integration with Boston Dynamics’ mobile robot Spot, enabling project teams to automate routine inspection tasks and capture data safely and with greater precision. The collaboration combines the data collection capabilities of Spot with Zepth’s cutting-edge intelligent technology, allowing users to draw powerful insights from captured data to enhance efficiency, productivity and collaboration throughout each phase of a project lifecycle.
“I founded Zepth to address the widespread inefficiencies and communication lapses across the construction industry that ultimately lead to project delays and financial losses,” said Prasoon Shrivastava, founder and CEO of Zepth. “By integrating Spot into our system, we have an opportunity to truly revolutionize the site monitoring process and the industry at large. It is another step towards unifying the field with the office, particularly during an age of social distancing and remote working.”
Despite being one of the largest global industries, the construction sector struggles with outdated, inefficient and disjointed technologies. Traditional site progress reporting requires human workers to manually capture data with cameras, resulting in differences in angles and light variations, the companies explain. The worker then uploads and manually organizes the data in a hard drive, cloud server or service such as Dropbox, distributing the data to team members via email or a shared folder. Separate tools are needed to identify and annotate issues, create snag lists, assign tasks to team members and track their resolution. The lengthy process can require upwards of eight or more separate tools and systems to catalogue, share, and analyze information, resulting in scattered communications, lack of transparency and delays.
Spot’s autonomous, terrain-agnostic capabilities support the dynamic nature of the construction site and enable a standardized, precise data collection process. The project team can map a defined route for Spot to capture consistent data regularly and repeatedly, and the robot’s ability to traverse rough terrain and adapt to changing weather conditions allows it to safely capture as-built conditions on the site, even in hazardous and hard-to-reach areas. Spot can detect and pass obstacles to maintain its defined path and can be operated remotely.
Zepth’s project management modules enable project teams to transform that data into deeper insights about the project and drive data-driven decisions in real time, demonstrating how data can drive performance, the company said. The unique collaboration with Spot and Boston Dynamics will empower construction teams to work remotely from any location in the world. Zepth’s cutting edge artificial intelligence combined with Spot’s sophisticated data collection capabilities enables teams to create a living digital record of the project, delivering enhanced quality and accuracy control. Project teams can generate actionable data and document progress without interrupting the daily workflow, leading to more informed decisions. The integration of Spot within the full suite of Zepth tools enhances efficiency across all phases of a construction project to improve productivity, quality and safety, the company said.
