Thomas Bock

Technische Universität München | TUM · Chair of Building Realisation and Robotics

The rising global energy demand has made it essential to reduce energy consumption in the residential building stock. Adding a new insulating envelope with Renewable Energy Sources (RESs) onto the existing buildings’ facade is one way to achieve zero energy consumption in residential buildings. The ENSNARE project aims to semi-automate this process...

In order to reach a Zero-Energy-consuming building stock, it is necessary to insulate and add renewable energy sources on top of existing building envelopes. Off-site prefabricated modules have been used for covering building facades, but manual on-site installation procedures are still more competitive than prefabricated ones. Renovation with pref...

The construction industry, supported by the materials industry, is a major user of natural resources. Automation and robotics have the potential to play a key role in the development of circular construction by increasing productivity, reducing waste, increasing safety, and mitigating labor shortages. Starting with a brief synopsis of the history o...

The purpose of this research is to investigate the topic of the efficient renovation of existing buildings through construction robotics management. The main questions addressed are: How can we increase labor working conditions around construction sites? Why has the productivity of the construction industry decreased? What construction tasks requir...

As use of digital fabrication increases in architecture, engineering and construction, the industry seeks appropriate management and processes to enable the adoption during the design/planning phase. Many enablers have been identified across various studies; however, a comprehensive synthesis defining the enablers of design for digital fabrication...

To meet the requirements of Federal Law No. 384 “Technical regulations on the safety of buildings and facilities”, it is necessary to prevent the unacceptable strain level of the building base. Consequently, the design of foundations should be carried out taking into account the limiting base settlement. In this regard, pride of place goes to the i...

High-rise buildings often can accommodate the population of small horizontal cities. The investment in high-rise buildings is considerable and therefore a rapid return on investment is necessary. The immediate availability of high-rise buildings can be achieved by automated prefabrication of highly finished modules and their instant on-site assembl...

Due to a constantly growing interest in construction robots, guidance on the design and management for its development process is needed to employ the best practice know-how and accelerate efficient development and marketisation. The development of construction robots usually involves stakeholders from the construction sector, non-construction sect...

A cable-driven parallel robot (CDPR) was developed for the installation of curtain wall modules (CWM). The research addressed the question of whether the CDPR was capable installing CWMs with sufficient accuracy while being competitive compared to conventional manual methods. In order to develop and test such a system, a conceptual framework that c...

Population aging is one of the major challenges facing the world. In particular, the advent of China’s aging society caused by various factors will be a major threat to its future development. Therefore, serious measures need to be taken to achieve its demographic sustainability. Smart furniture can be considered as a novel subcategory of gerontech...

In recent years, there has been an increase in robots that perform activities in the built environment. In this chapter, projects were featured as case studies to demonstrate the potential of using automation and robotic technologies to facilitate building façade installation tasks. The Building Energy Renovation Through Timber-Prefabricated Module...

Rapid advances in modern technologies have completely revolutionized many industries in recent years. It is anticipated that mechatronic and automation technologies would play an important role in transforming the construction industry to embrace for the fourth industrial revolution. However, construction automation problems bring up new research c...

Broad research concepts are usually developed in different phases where advances are carried out separately. That is the case of the automated and robotic façade renovation with modules. In this case, solutions were developed independently in the context of two research projects. In order to offer a holistic vision, analyze the current state, and s...

Population aging is one of the major challenges facing the world. In particular, the advent of China's aging society caused by various factors will be a major threat to its future development. Therefore, serious measures need to be taken to achieve its demographic sustainability. Smart furniture can be considered as a novel subcategory of gerontech...

Single-task construction robots (STCRs) have become a popular research topic for decades. However, there is still a gap in the ubiquitous application of STCRs for onsite construction due to various reasons, such as cost concerns. Therefore, cost-benefit analysis (CBA) can be used to measure the net economic benefit of the STCRs, compared to traditi...

Delivering energy-efficient buildings or settlements has become a popular topic amongst architects, engineers, and building engineering physicists. There are many methods for improving building energy performances, both for new build projects and for retrofitting existing buildings. However, the construction industry faces some profound challenges...

The installation of curtain wall modules (CWMs) is a risky activity carried out in the heights and often under unfavorable weather conditions. CWMs are heavy prefabricated walls that are lifted normally with bindings and cranes. High stability is needed while positioning in order not to damage the fragile CWMs. Moreover, this activity requires high...

Aging society is not only a crisis in the developed world but also a severe challenge in some emerging economies. However, the awareness of population aging and gerontechnology is far from sufficiently addressed in the architectural design education in universities. Therefore, an interdisciplinary approach in design education is urgently needed to...

(1) The overall energy requirement of a building may be impacted by the building design, the selection of materials, the construction methods, and lifecycle management. To achieve an optimum energy-efficiency level when dealing with a new building or renovation project, it is important to improve the entire construction process as it is not enough...

Construction robots are expected to have disruptive impacts on the building industry, but 8 there is still a lack of utilisation. While significant attention has been paid to technical 9 advancement, little has been done to comprehensively understand the broader societal issues 10 associated with the use of this technology. This paper aims to provi...

Nowadays a great number of new developments are claimed in the name of “vertical city”, yet few represent this important characteristic. This paper aims to propose a novel vertical city framework, or in other words, dynamic vertical urbanism, featuring constant vertical urban transformation by applying the state-of-the-art construction technologies...

Ageing is associated with a decline in physical activity and a decrease in the ability to perform activities of daily living, affecting physical and mental health. Elderly people or patients could be supported by a human activity recognition (HAR) system that monitors their activity patterns and intervenes in case of change in behavior or a critica...

The world’s population is aging at an unprecedented pace. Aging society is not only a severe crisis in the developed world, but also a rigorous challenge in emerging economies. Many age-related diseases are fostered by the lack of physical, cognitive, and social activities. Increasing the activity level has many benefits for the elderly and can imp...

The technological development of construction robots is underway globally. However, current development activities face significant uncertainties, particularly in terms of the definition and management of system requirements, which are primarily based on vague assumptions about the future. Thus, a new tool is required to grasp how construction robo...

Deliverable D32: Detailed set of privacy guidelines and schemata Responsive Engagement of the Elderly promoting Activity and Customized Healthcare 2 Deliverable D32: Detailed set of privacy guidelines and schemata: Summarization of the outcome of the development of necessary data privacy and security schemata to (1) protect sensed data; (2) ascerta...

REACH has the ambition to influence and gain from standardization on national, European, and international level. We aim to create synergies between parallel work on these levels that will finally make a beneficial impact. Systematic parallel and synergetic work on these levels allow REACH to create a maximized impact for all involved stakeholders,...

The Construction Industry Council Hong Kong (CIC) had commissioned the Chair of Building Realization and Robotics (br2) at Technical University of Munich (TUM) to develop a facade processing robots for high-rise housing buildings (2017-2019). Details of this patent can be found on the online Patents Search System of HKIPD (https://esearch.ipd.gov.h...

REACH stands for “Responsive Engagement of the Elderly Promoting Activity and Customized Healthcare”. Sustained physical activity matters greatly to the health and well-being of older people and significantly improves their chance of maintaining independent living. It can make a difference across the whole care continuum as well as in almost every...

Autonomous navigation is of great importance for service robots. Such robots need various technologies, especially localization, and mapping. In this paper, we focus on the localization problem. Commonly, to solve the localization problem, the creation of a map is needed. However, creating the map takes considerable time and costs. Therefore, one s...

A need exists for faster installation of prefabricated modules in the refurbishment market. Current solutions for installing and fitting prefabricated modules on existing buildings are time consuming. The objective of this research is to reduce the time currently required for the installation of timber-based 2D modules by using innovative technolog...

Because of the sharply growing interest worldwide of “hard” physical-mechanical robot systems for the execution of on-site construction tasks [i.e. single-task construction robots (STCRs)], the purpose of this study is to equip development projects with a systematic design-management system model that allows to integrate the different needs and aim...

The new research field of Ambient/Active Assisted Living (AAL) is quickly evolving. Ambient Integrated Robotics provides an easy-to-understand medical perspective to architects, designers, and engineers, bridging the different disciplines and showing how they fuse together to create the future of AAL technology. Using robotics as an example, the bo...

Construction automation, construction robotics, prefabrication, off-site manufacturing, modular construction, mass-customisation

For a long time, the conventional construction sector in Hong Kong has been perceived as old-fashioned and lagging behind compared to many other industrial sectors. Numerous challenges are facing the construction industry, such as diminishing productivity, unstable quality, increasing demand, as well as population aging and shortage in the local la...

This workshop proceedings contain the final author versions submitted to the CIB World Building Congress 2019. All articles originally appeared in the official proceedings of the CIB World Building Congress 2019 which can be accessed through www.cibworld.nl CIB Working Commission W119 on Customized Industrial Construction has been established as t...

The world’s population is aging at an unprecedented pace. Aging society is not only a severe crisis in the developed world such as Germany and Japan, but also a rigorous challenge in emerging economies such as China. Many age-related diseases are fostered by the lack of physical, cognitive, and social activities. Increasing the activity level has m...

In this paper the authors present the equipping of a 1:1 scaled AAL laboratory apartment with prefabricated compact "terminals" that concentrate on assistive technology. The development has been conducted within the Project LISA HABITEC, which is funded by the City of Bozen, Italy. Within this project new possibilities have been investigated, to en...

Integrating robot-based automation into the design and construction processes offers not only improvement in accuracy, consistency and efficiency, but also opportunity to build more sustainably in the long term. This paper demonstrates the use of advanced building technology and construction robotics for smart energy solutions by summarizing the pr...

In this paper we propose a modeling strategy for Cable Driven Parallel Robots (CDPRs) that - given their complexity - are typically addressed using simplified analysis, therefore neglecting relevant dynamics. Specifically, the finite element method is used for cables modeling, in order to account for their mass and stress-dependent stiffness. Geome...

This article studies the development of a prediction diagnosis cyber-physical system for DC and AC electric drives of construction robots . The struc-ture of the cyber-physical system is described and the defect statistics for asynchronous drives submitted. Additionally, a critical analysis of existing diagnostic methods, the selection of the optim...

When compared to the manufacturing industry, the advances of intelligent and seamless project management approaches lag behind in the construction industry. This is due to the complexity of the construction projects as well as various stakeholders who acquire specific interest of the project. For instance, public building construction has many sub-...

As a sophisticated organism, a city has an essential characteristic, which is the ability to constantly and flexibly transform throughout its lifecycle in response to economy shifts, demographic change, and environmental pressures. Nowadays a number of new developments are claimed in the name of “vertical city”, yet few represent this important cha...