Boston Dynamics' Brian Ringley offers a perspective on the industry's digital future, including the potential convergence of BIM, digital twins and robotics.

New advances in automation, data collection and the perils of too many pilot projects were the top line ideas at the first day of the 2021 ENR FutureTech conference. 

The dog-shaped Spot robot from Boston Dynamics will be available next year with a Trimble laser scanner and GNSS antenna built in, for an out-of-the box autonomous reality capture on jobsites.

“Ideas and solutions are the easy part,” says Ricardo Khan, senior director of innovation at Mortenson Construction. It’s “the process” that is the real challenge. Khan’s midday keynote captured one of the key themes of the second day of the virtual ENR FutureTech conference—the need to identify the problems in your construction process before you start throwing technology at them

Tracking work put-in-place on a job, inspectors often walk sites at the end of the week to tabulate what was installed.

Boston Dynamics’ autonomous dog-shaped robot, Spot, is known for its ability to traverse complex terrain and is now being used by construction companies for inspections and LiDAR site scans.