Robotic gondolas perform fully autonomous building façade maintenance
Singapore industrial AI and robotics companies, H3 Dynamics and ELID Technology, have entered into a commercial and technical partnership that ties H3 Dynamics’ AI-enabled façade assessments to ELID’s robotic façade repair gondolas.
The partners say the combined technologies create "the first end to end automation solution covering both inspection and remediation activities on tall buildings. This increases worker safety, while scaling up much needed maintenance in large-scale cities with aging populations and thousands of aging structures," added a statement by the firms.
Launched 3 years ago, H3 Dynamics’ H3 Zoom platform applies AI and workflow automation to help digitize health assessments of various structures and sites, with a first solution aimed at modernizing dangerous façade inspection work.
This year Singapore enacted the Periodic Façade Inspection regime, making it compulsory to inspect buildings over 13 meters high and over 20 years of age every 7 years. Anticipating this development, Singapore’s JTC Corporation partnered with H3 Dynamics to develop an all-digital façade inspection solution as part of a national innovation initiative, now seen as the most advanced solution of its kind. The AI-enabled solution has been applied to over 900 buildings so far in Singapore alone.
So far H3 Dynamics relied mainly on drone cameras to feed its cloud-based report generation system with HD and thermal images.
But in the last 2 years its platform expanded to “non-drone" data workflows, connecting to body worn cameras, fixed cameras, and various robots – including AXIOBOTS robotic façade gondolas from ELID.
“H3 Zoom is an agnostic site or asset intelligence platform - we purposely separated our software platform from our hardware developments so that we can open ourselves to new possibilities,” says Shaun Koo, CTO and co-rounder of H3 Dynamics’ H3 Zoom business. “Robotic gondolas can operate autonomously where drones cannot, especially in tight urban environments.”
Following recent developments with CapitaLand, one of South-East Asia’s leading real estate companies – H3 Dynamics’ H3 Zoom platform capabilities have expanded to automated repair cost estimates, vendor management as well as repair project tracking.
The platform links seamlessly to third party enterprise software, such as SAP’s work order management systems, or BIM tools from Autodesk, and has now partnered with HP Enterprise and Oracle to reach even more clients. The company says the system is open, agnostic, and can flow easily from assets anywhere in the field to clients’ operations.
ELID’s AXIOBOTS robotic gondolas are billed as bringing façade maintenance automation to the next level: They can paint, grout, clean, check for waterproofing and provide visual inspection.
Combining AXIOBOTS with H3 Zoom AI-enabled platform fully automates the physical inspection and remediation process, linking precise positioning and qualification of defects with automated NDT physical checks and repair.
“Our partnership with ELID exemplifies a powerful end to end innovation, where robots are not just capable of acquiring data, but also execute repair tasks identified by our AI analytics platform. This will make smart cities even smarter - bringing building automation to the next level,” said Taras Wankewycz, CEO of H3 Dynamics.
“We are proud to have H3 Dynamics’ market leading 'Facade Inspector' solution tied to AXIOBOTS facade robots. This provides clients with an easy all-in-one-solution for their façade maintenance needs,” added Kenneth Wong, CEO of ELID Technology International.
H3 Dynamics and ELID are expected to begin trials of the combined solution in Singapore with JTC Corporation and Frasers Property Singapore, as a springboard to other megacities and countries with dense urban city-centers.
