Robots are making this Boston construction site safer

Jul 27, 2023

Look closely at the massive scaffolding being erected around 26 Court St. in downtown Boston and you can glimpse a piece of the construction industry’s automated future.

For centuries, even millennia, workers have used ropes and pulleys to lift pipes and planks to assemble scaffolds on the outside of buildings. That’s the way Marr Scaffolding, the 125-year-old company working on the project, has operated (sometimes adding an electric winch) — until now.

But the job site at 26 Court St., the former headquarters of the Boston Public Schools, has largely replaced ropes and pulleys with two high-tech robots made in Germany. Dubbed Liftbot, the robots resemble window washers’ scaffolds that attach to metal tracks running up the sides of the scaffolding on the 11-story building.

Advertisement

The robot warns workers if they’ve loaded too much cargo and won’t move if it’s over its weight limit or its side doors aren’t securely closed. At the press of a button, the battery-powered, semi-autonomous robot rides smoothly up or down its track, coming to a stop on its own — workers don’t have to monitor its progress and manually trigger a stop. And unlike a rope loaded with hundreds of pounds of materials, it doesn’t sway in the wind.

“It’s a no-brainer,” foreman Patrick Murphy, a 24-year construction veteran, said as he watched Liftbot’s smooth ascent on a hot summer day. “This saves so much wear and tear on our bodies and it’s so much safer — it won’t let you do something you shouldn’t.”

Prowling around the site dressed in jeans, a black polo shirt, and a white construction hat was Artem Kuchukov, co-founder and chief executive of Liftbot’s maker, Kewazo. The Munich-based company has raised a total of $20 million from investors, including venture capital fund Cybernetix Ventures in Boston.

Advertisement

Kuchukov and his team studied robots being used in warehouses and the logistics industry but had to develop a more flexible system for messy construction sites. “A lot of construction is renovation work like this,” Kuchukov said. “There’s limited space and you can’t just bring in anything you want.”

Liftbot’s journey to Court Street involved some fortunate timing. Kuchukov was attending a robotics conference in Boston and had brought a Liftbot to demo. A construction industry contact introduced him to Marr Scaffolding. The day after the conference, he drove a U-Haul with the robot out to Marr’s yard where he impressed workers and chief executive Dan Marr. The company had just started the project at 26 Court St. and asked Kuchukov to set up there. After using one Liftbot for a few weeks, the company bought a second unit.

“In construction, there’s often some tried and true process that we haven’t updated since the way my grandfather did it,” Marr, the fifth generation in his family to run the business, said. The Liftbots increase worker efficiency and make the job site considerably safer, he said.

The scaffolding, which rises 130 feet in the air with 20 decks, is part of the $100 million gut renovation of the 1912 building on Court Street, which will include sandblasting the building’s outer surfaces and replacing windows.

Liftbot was designed for scaffolding jobs and it is also being used for a renovation of the US Capitol in Washington, D.C. But Kuchukov is looking ahead to building robots to assist with other, somewhat similar tasks in the industry like roofing, painting, and insulating.

Advertisement

Marr’s workers nicknamed one of the Liftbot’s “Stephanie,” and the company is holding a contest to name the second model. Despite his industry’s reputation for resisting change, Marr sees an increasing role for technology.

“The construction industry can be a little bit slow to take up new things like this,” he said. “But there are formidable advantages, and I think 10 years from now it’s going to be vastly different.”

Aaron Pressman can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @ampressman.