There will be a new type of worker on a Pomerleau construction site in Quebec as of Friday, a most unusual addition to the company’s staff. It’s a robot named Spot. Montreal-based Pomerleau says it is the first company in the world to use this robot on a daily basis on an active work site.
The robot, which is just under three feet high and weighs 70 pounds, will patrol the construction sites taking up to 500 photos per day via a 360-degree camera mounted on its back and other cameras on its body. The photos will then be automatically downloaded and sent to Pomerleau managers at the end of the robot’s shift.
The camera is connected to a documentation platform called HoloBuilder, which allows the Pomerleau executives to analyze the work site’s progress using virtual design and construction software. The photos can be used to track the progress of the project and to see if it looks to be coming in under or over budget, and if it is on schedule.
Pomerleau, one of Canada’s leading construction companies, is renting two robots from Boston Dynamics, a Massachusetts company that specializes in engineering and robotics design. Boston Dynamics is known for creating BigDog, a four-legged robot made for the American military.
Executives at Pomerleau would not reveal how much they are paying to rent the two robots, only saying it is a costly piece of equipment. It is a pilot project that will last six months and at the end of that period, Pomerleau’s executives will decide whether it is worth buying two of them. They rented two because they want to have one as a backup in case there are problems with one of them.
For now, Pomerleau will have a staffer accompanying the robot to make sure everything is working fine, but it can be preprogrammed and wander the site on its own.
“The primary goal is ensuring the safety of our workers, for example to detect if there is a danger of something falling on them,” said Eric Lessard, chief digital officer at Pomerleau. “But it will also provide us with a real-time chronicle of the progress on our work sites.”
Until now, Pomerleau and other construction companies have had to hire someone to walk through the sites and take the photos. So if they end up buying the robots, it will save them having to use employees to do the job.
Spot runs on rechargeable batteries that are good for eight hours and has sensors on all sides to help it avoid bumping into things.
“There’s three goals,” said Debby Cordeiro, vice-president of communications and marketing at Pomerleau.
“The first goal is health and safety … The robot has the ability to get into tight spaces and go into areas that would otherwise be more risky or more dangerous for human beings. So being able to look at how a particular element has been installed in an area that’s a tight fit or would otherwise be hard to access is a definite plus,” she said. “(Also) being able to see the pictures after the daily download does provide additional insight into which areas need to be secured in a better way or what areas are already well secured. So it’s a good assessment tool.
Spot the robot is seen at Pomerleau work site in Montreal on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2020.
Allen McInnis /
Montreal Gazette
“The second thing is quality,” Cordeiro said. “The other thing that’s very important in construction is that we want to deliver a quality product and in order to do that we need to have good visibility over how the project is evolving. Although we have staff that are going around, this is just an extra pair of eyes.
“The third thing is, the construction industry is transforming itself, like many other industries,” Cordeiro said. “In fact, you could argue that the construction industry is one of the last industries to transform itself from a digital standpoint. That means finding ways to innovate … and this allows us to take the person who would have otherwise been walking around with a camera on top of their helmet and having to take these pictures manually, and now that person can analyze the pictures instead of just managing the input.”
Pomerleau would not reveal which of its construction sites will be hosting Spot on Friday.