Philippines: Robotics

            By: Joseph Seabra

The Philippines is a country that is focusing primarily on its infrastructural growth, as it is a country that relies heavily on tourism as a source of income and employment for the nation. Due to the Philippines wanting to focus on infrastructural growth an advancement in robotics within the construction industry could greatly benefit the country. Evidence of the Philippines putting its resources into infrastructural growth is the country’s 7.6-billion-dollar investment in 2018 to help repair and replace bridges, roads, and the Metro Manila Subway (Miller, 2018). Along with this large investment in 2018 the country has also investigated multiple potential investments into the counties growth and development to increase tourism. This can be seen by the Philippine’s President Rodrigo Duterte backing the “Build, Build, Build” initiative which is estimated to “spend $180 billion to renovate and build airports, railways, roads and ports over a six-year period.” (Miller, 2018).  

If the country was to invest in robotic construction technology the Philippines would be able to save a tremendous amount of financial investment on time and labor. According to the Robotics Industries Association the construction industry “is one of the least automated industries that feature manual-intensive labor as a primary source of productivity” (Robotics Online Marketing Team, 2018). If the Philippines was to utilize robotics technology such as masonry robots, and welding robots they would be able to serve as a forefront for an under-utilized industry. One company that has researched and developed technologies for construction and has made the first commercially available masonry robot is Construction Robotics founded in 2008. The robot created by this company allows for a reduction of an estimated 50% of labor cost, along with laying around 2000 bricks in the time it takes a physical mason to lay 400 bricks (2017b)   

(theconstructionindex.co.uk, 2018)

A large problem in all infrastructural growth for a country is fitting in its expected growth within the constraints of its available labor. Due to the country geological distribution being very divided, it can be assumed that finding workers would be very difficult. This problem could be easily fixed with the implementation of robotics which would serve to autotomize task that are more routine and menial. According to ConstructionWorld.org the reduction of human interferences in construction task and infrastructural growth would mean that “manufacturing parts and materials will be much more consistent, with a higher quality” due a decrease in the amount of “human error and inconsistency” (2017a). This raises the question as to whether this would in turn take jobs away from those seeking employment in the Philippines, but what is recommended in implementing this technology into the construction industry is to have this technology work alongside those employed in construction in order half the time of the country’s current infrastructural growth.

The robotics industry within the construction industry is truly an under-utilized field that could help with time, labor, cost, and quality within the Philippines construction Industry. Now more than ever the Philippines is growing its infrastructure through increased construction and is trying to develop its nation into one that can serve as a future hub for tourism and technology. For the country to do this effectively it should implement robotics within the construction industry to truly achieve this goal and become the epicenter of growth within robotic construction and infrastructure. 

 

References

Miller, M. (2018). Four Important Facts to Know About Infrastructure in the Philippines. In The Borgen Project. Retrieved October 9, 2019, from https://borgenproject.org/know-infrastructure-in-the-philippines/

Robotics Online Marketing Team. (2018). Construction Robots Will Change the Industry Forever. In Robotics Industry Association. Retrieved October 9, 2019, from https://www.robotics.org/blog-article.cfm/Construction-Robots-Will-Change-the-Industry-Forever/93

theconstructionindex.co.uk. (Publisher). (2018). jpg. Retrieved from https://www.theconstructionindex.co.uk/assets/news_articles/2018/01/1516692520_sam100.jpg

(2017a). 7 Ways Robotics is Transforming the Construction Industry. In ConstructionWorld.org. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from http://www.constructionworld.org/6-ways-robotics-transforming-construction-industry/

(2017b). Robot Brickmasons and a Robotic Bricklaying Stock. In nanalyze.com. Retrieved October 10, 2019, from https://www.nanalyze.com/2017/11/robot-brickmasons-robotic-bricklaying/