PRESS RELEASE: The School of Civil Engineering and the Built Environment, at Liverpool John Moores University, leads the way with ‘robot dog’ investment.

LJMU is the first university in Europe to acquire Spot and the 3D Laser Scanner with software as a package and plans to use its £150k investment for teaching and research.

Engineers at LJMU have gone out and bought a dog!

It’s four-legged and likes a little walk but ‘Spot’ won’t be barking or looking for cuddles because it’s a robot dog designed for all terrains and ideal for construction and civil engineering surveys.

Supplied and adapted by BuildingPoint UK and Ireland (the construction arm of Liverpool based mapping and surveying equipment specialists, KOREC), the robot dog has been developed by American robotics company, Boston Dynamics, in conjunction with Trimble who are the manufacturers of Spot’s 3D Laser Scanner payload. The end result is an agile, fully autonomous, four-legged robot that can be used to enter buildings which are unsafe for humans or to survey building projects as they progress.

The robot dog can either undertake fully autonomous pre-programmed missions or can even be operated remotely and controlled off-site. Both options will ensure that Spot is a perfect fit for survey requirements in hazardous conditions or for carrying out repetitive survey tasks, freeing up a skilled surveyor to work elsewhere.

Sam Hough, BuildingPoint UK and Ireland Business Manager, said: Read more

“The Future of…” Series 2 – Construction Robotics

During the summer we launched our BuildingPoint UK and Ireland ‘The Future Of….’ Series looking at key trends in digital construction and we decided there was nowhere better to kick off than with Augmented and Mixed Reality – technology that’s truly transforming the way we work!

The second trend that we’ve decided to take a look at is Construction Robots and the nature of ‘true autonomy’.

“An autonomous robot is a robot that acts without recourse to human control” is the official definition. Short and to the point, it’s an easy one to understand.

However, since the introduction of Trimble’s Spot the Dog we’ve realised that our customers and colleagues have plenty more to say on the subject! Spot is a four-legged robot developed by American robotics company Boston Dynamics that’s armed with Trimble’s X7 3D laser scanner and Trimble FieldLink software to collect data while navigating challenging, dynamic and potentially unsafe environments… and it’s certainly had lots of media interest.

Opinions that matter!

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