DOI: 10.3390/buildings16214432 ISSN: 2075-5309

Integrating Construction-Robot Spatial Requirements into BIM-Based Site Layout Checking: A Requirement–Geometry–Rule Workflow Applied to a High-Rise Building Project

Jun You, Xiaer Xiahou, Peng Cui, Ping Liu

Construction robots need space for travel, operation, charging, maintenance, and separation from workers, yet these requirements are rarely planned explicitly on construction sites. Building information modeling (BIM)-based site layout planning formalizes constraints for conventional facilities, and BIM–robot studies address task planning and navigation, but the relations among robot spatial requirements, the volumes reserved for them, and the conditions under which these volumes are verified have not been systematically organized. This study extends established BIM rule-based clash checking with a four-stage requirement–geometry–rule workflow and applies it to a 17-story high-rise office building across foundation-pit, superstructure, and finishing layouts with three proposed robot types. Of the 20 rules checked, eight (40%) were robot-related, increasing the number of checks by 67% overall and by 100% in the superstructure phase. Fourteen initial violations under three conventional rules were eliminated by three manual layout revisions, and no robot-related violations were reported. A ±0.4 m change in the adopted clearance allowance changed corridor widths by ±30% and ±21%; cost, schedule, and labor effects were not measured. The results suggest that robot deployment should be treated as a site-planning variable and point toward validated robot space libraries, schedule-linked 4D checking, and field studies.

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