With the global promotion of industrialized buildings, characterized by off-site manufacturing and on-site installation, they have significantly improved efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and material utilization compared to traditional construction methods. However, the current performance of industrialized building manufacturing (IBM) still has room for optimization in terms of time efficiency and cost reduction, which can be attributed to factors such as the lack of unified technical guidance, low human labor productivity due to insufficient technical experts, and underutilization of factory space. Against this background, the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics has become a key direction to address these issues and enhance the development of IBM.
Therefore, Mengjun WANG, Jiannan CAI, Da HU, Yuqing HU, Zhu HAN, and Shuai LI from institutions including The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, The University of Texas at San Antonio, and Kennesaw State University have jointly conducted a review study entitled “AI-based robots in industrialized building manufacturing”.
This study adopts a narrative literature review methodology, systematically exploring the integration of AI and robotics in IBM to improve efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and material use in off-site assembly. The research categorizes AI-based Robots (AIRs) applications into four critical stages: Cognition, Communication, Control, and Collaboration and Coordination, and further investigates their application in the factory assembly process of industrialized buildings, which is divided into component preparation, sub-assembly, main assembly, finishing tasks, and quality control. By analyzing research from 2014 to 2024, the review highlights the significant improvements AIRs have brought to the construction sector, identifies existing challenges, and outlines future research directions. The cognition module focuses on robots’ environmental perception and human-related cognition through sensors and software techniques; the communication module explores core protocols, fieldbus systems, and human-robot interaction interfaces; the control module covers low-level precise and adaptive control as well as high-level motion and path planning; the coordination and collaboration module examines inter-robot coordination frameworks and different levels of human-robot collaboration.
The paper “AI-based robots in industrialized building manufacturing” authored by Mengjun WANG, Jiannan CAI, Da HU, Yuqing HU, Zhu HAN, Shuai LI is published in Front. Eng. Manag. 2025, 12(1): 59–85, with the DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42524-025-4099-x.
