wiredInUSA December 2017

M A K I N G T H E NEWS

Rebar gets tied down

our big challenges is finding people to tie deck rebar,” said Muck, who has experience of building bridges as chief executive of Pennsylvania contractor Brayman Construction. Muck explained that when Brayman built the Hulton Bridge in 2015 it took a crew of ten workers 7,400 man hours between April and September to lay 113,000ft 2 of rebar, tying over two million joints. “[Tybot] both speeds up the work and reduces the number of people to do it,” Muck said. “This is the construction industry looking to the robotics industry for a solution to a business problem.” He added that Tybot can tie rebar at night, or when workers are needed elsewhere. Mr Searock added: “This is a very boring robot that has great application and profitability.”

A US start-up has developed a robot to tie steel reinforcement bars before the concrete pour, saving hours on construction projects. The machine, called the Tybot, uses a robotic arm rigged to a gantry crane that locates rebar junctions and attaches a tie. Since structures can have thousands of such intersections, the robot could circumvent a labor- intensive, expensive and injury-prone process. It is the first product of Advanced Construction Robotics (ACR), launched by construction firm boss Steve Muck and robotics expert Jeremy Searock, formerly of Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center. “What we’re trying to do at ACR is methodically look at the most difficult critical path challenges, and our first product reflects that, because one of

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wiredInUSA - December 2017