Hilti At Icra 2023  –  Envisioning The FutureOf Robotic Autonomy At The Construction Site

Hilti Group demonstrates its commitment to being a trailblazer in advanced technologies research by means of an increased presence at this year’s IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), the world’s leading robotics research conference, in London this week (May 29^th to June 2^nd). It is being held in London for the first time and Hilti joins an impressive roster of sponsors including Apple, Boston Dynamics AI Institute, Sony, Dyson and more.

Hilti’s own innovations will be on show at stand H-16, with visitors able to learn more about the company’s Jaibot, the world’s first semi-autonomous ceiling drilling robot. Designed to help lessen pressure on workers tasked with overhead jobs, the Hilti Jaibot is a semi-autonomous drilling machine capable of 8 hours of drilling between charges. Users can upload data to the Hilti cloud, including the layout of a space and number of holes required, and the construction robot then drills thousands of holes autonomously according to the digital drilling plan. This results in increased drilling accuracy but also reduces the amount of manual labour required, helping workers stay healthier and more productive.

Hilti’s appearance at the event follows the announcement of a strategic partnership with San Francisco-based Canvas, a construction robotics company founded in 2017 by veterans of Boston Dynamics, MIT and Stanford that has developed a robotic drywalling solution aiming to empower people to build in bold new ways. The partnership marks the beginning of a significant new step in robotics innovation after the launch of the Hilti Jaibot. As a further commitment to leading the field Hilti as a group now invests 6-7% of its net global revenue to research and development in innovation.

Members of Hilti’s Corporate Research and Technology (CR&T) Division will be in attendance to showcase the Hilti Jaibot and scout for both technology and talent. The CR&T department is Hilti’s own technology-disruption innovation engine which pushes the bounds of what’s scientifically possible to deploy at a construction site - to not only boost human productivity and make tools more intelligent and intuitive to use, but also to help define what the future of construction will look like in the years to come.

In an independent talk at the conference, CR&T’s Lavinia Pedrollo will share her perspective on how Hilti drives inclusion and diversity at the workplace. The team also co-organises a workshop on the Future of Construction, which will host a wide range of speakers across academia and industry, research presentations, and an announcement of the winners of the Hilti SLAM Challenge 2023.

The HILTI SLAM Challenge 2023 is a competition that allows for benchmarking of the most suitable software algorithms for positioning and mapping. This in turn enables the next generation of high speed and high accuracy measurement-based applications in construction – for both robots and humans. Together with the University of Zürich, Hilti has created a benchmark which focuses on the SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) problem in real construction site environments with challenging features. This year around, Hilti introduces multi-session SLAM as a new theme in addition to single-session SLAM, spanning both handheld, as well as robot-mounted sensor suites. More information about the challenge can be found here. The 2023 submission list currently stands at 5,428 submissions, made by 74 teams worldwide.