H3 Dynamics, ELID Partner on Robotic Building Facade Inspection
April 4, 2022
Singapore-based H3 Dynamics and ELID Technology have announced a commercial and technology partnership that combines artificial intelligence-enabled facade assessments with robotic facade repair gondolas.
The combined technologies aim to create the first end to end automation solution that covers both inspection and remediation activities on tall buildings. This will increase worker safety, while also scaling up much-needed maintenance in large cities that have aging populations and thousands of aging structures.
Launched three years ago, H3 Dynamics’ H3 Zoom platform applies AI and workflow automation to help digitize the health assessments of various structures and sites, with a solution aimed at modernizing dangerous facade inspection work. This year, Singapore enacted the Periodic Facade Inspection regime, making it compulsory to inspect buildings over 13 meters high and over 20 years of age every seven years. Anticipating this, Singapore’s JTC Corporation partnered with H3 to develop its inspection solution, which has been applied to more than 900 buildings in Singapore so far.
While the company has relied mainly on drone cameras to feed its cloud-based report generation system with HD and thermal images, it also expanded the platform to non-drone workflows such as body cameras, fixed cameras and robots, including ELID’s AXIOBOTs, robotic facade gondolas.
“H3 Zoom is an agnostic site or asset intelligence platform – we purposely separated our software platform from our hardware developments so that we can open ourselves to new possibilities,” said Shaun Koo, CTO and co-founder of H3’s Zoom business. “Robotic gondolas can operate autonomously where drones cannot, especially in tight urban environments.”
The AXIOBOTs bring facade maintenance automation to the next level, as they can paint, grout, clean, check for waterproofing and provide visual inspections, ELID said. Combining the robots with the Zoom platform fully automates the physical inspection and remediation process, linking precise positioning and qualification of defects with automated NDT physical checks and repair.
“Our partnership with ELID exemplifies a powerful end-to-end innovation, where robots are not just capable of acquiring data, but also execute repair tasks identified by our AI analytics platform,” said Taras Wankewycz, CEO of H3 Dynamics. “This will make smart cities even smarter – bringing building automation to the next level.”
Trials of the combined solution are expected to happen with JTC Corporation and Frasers Property Singapore, as a springboard to other cities and countries with dense urban city centers.
For more details on H3 Dynamics, visit its website here. For details on ELID’s AXIOBOTs, visit its website here.
