An Assessment of the Usage of Collaborative Robotics in the South African Construction Industry

In recent years, Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) has garnered considerable attention. The emergence of Collaborative Robots (Cobots) as the second generation of robots offers new possibilities for the development of single-task construction robots that collaborate with human workers. Although Cobots are becoming more recognised as work partners, new methods will be needed to manage an African workforce that still has to build trust, only collaborates with one another, and fears losing their jobs. This study discusses the level of awareness of Cobots in the South African construction industry. Corresponding literature was reviewed, and a quantitative research methodology was adopted to extract information about the research objectives. To achieve this, a simple random sampling technique was used, and a survey questionnaire was distributed to 100 construction professionals, who were situated in the Gauteng province of South Africa. According to the rankings extracted from the calculated mean item scores and standard deviation, it was determined that the respondents are most aware of the Automated Product Assistant (APAS) which is used to replace labor-intensive or repetitive lifting operations performed by people in material handling applications. The results also showed that the respondents are least aware of the Baxter Robot which is used for handling lightweight components during material assembly. The level of awareness of these Cobots could be linked to the availability of these Cobots in the South African construction industry. Based on the findings of the study, it can be recommended that more research, exposure, and strategies need to be applied in order to increase awareness so as to improve the usage of Cobots in the industry.