英語美文:機器人“監工”上線提高工作效率

“Hey, look busy. Our robot boss is trundling over here!” That’s a sound that you may very well hear on the construction sites of the future, thanks to a lidar-equipped robot and matching drone developed by the company Doxel. Emerging from stealth this week with a $4.5 million funding round, Doxel hopes to revolutionize the construction industry using robots to scan construction sites to make sure that work is progressing correctly.

“嘿，快忙起來，我們的機器人老闆正在附近視察呢!”未來的建築工地上很可能會經常聽到這種聲音，這要得益於Doxel公司開發的.一款內置激光雷達的機器人和配套無人機。曾出產隱形飛機的Doxel本週獲得4500萬美元投資，希望在建築行業掀起革命，用機器人掃描工地情況，確保工程正確進行。

Far from a simple robotic camera, however, Doxel’s smart robots harness cutting-edge deep-learning technology to make informed judgements about how well work is going. If things fall behind schedule, a construction manager will receive a smartphone notification reading, “Mechanical team productivity has dropped below threshold” or similar. In other words, simply trying to look busy on site won’t be enough to fool these smart management bots.

Doxel公司的智能機器人遠不止機器攝像頭這樣簡單，它藉助前沿深度學習技術在瞭解現場情況後可以很好地判斷工程進度。如果工程進度落後，建築經理會在智能手機上收到類似“機械團隊產率低於門檻值”之類的提示。換言之，在工地上裝樣子的人沒辦法糊弄智能管理機器人。

“We make use of drones and rovers as data-capture mechanisms; drones for outdoors and rovers for indoors,” Saurabh Ladha, CEO and co-founder of Doxel, told Digital Trends. “The vast majority of construction involves indoors and that is where we deploy lidar in addition to an HD camera. The lidar captures depth data. Once the data is captured, our deep learning kicks in to automatically inspect quality and measure installed quantities. The diversity of objects found in construction and the degree of noise, clutter, and occlusion you find in such environments had made the automation of this process nearly impossible. Doxel’s A.I. capabilities means that job sites are automatically digitized, that project quality undergoes ongoing inspection, and that progress is measured in real time. Our dashboard then offers automatic real-time budget, schedule, and quality reports. We help to keep molehills from becoming mountains.”

“我們使用無人機和探測車作為數據捕捉機制;無人機用於室外，探測車用於室內”Doexl公司首席執行官和聯合創始人紹拉巴·拉德哈告訴Digital Trends網站“絕大多數建築工程都在室內進行，除高清攝像頭外，我們還會安裝許多激光雷達。一旦捕捉到數據，深度學習自動監測工程質量，估計工程進度。工地現場材料物品繁多，封閉又雜亂的環境十分嘈雜，實現自動化幾無可能。Doxel公司的人工智能技術意味着工地現場自動實現數字化，工程質量可進行持續監測，工程進度也可進行實時估計。隨後屏幕會自動提供實時預算，進度表與質量報告。這有助於企業防微杜漸。”

Ladha observes that many construction projects — as many as 98 percent of large ones — can go significantly over time and budget. Being able to spot these trends early means that changes can be made in order to ensure things progress as efficiently as possible.

拉德哈注意到許多建築工程，即多達98%的大型建築工程都存在嚴重的超支超時問題。及早發現超支超時的趨勢意味着可以做出改變確保工程儘可能高效地進行。

“We are currently working with large construction companies such as DPR Construction, as well as a large healthcare company building hospitals and medical office buildings,” Ladha said. “We sell Doxel as a service: everything from capturing data to delivering insights, and the service is sold on a monthly fee basis. Having just come out of stealth, our plans are to grow the business. The construction industry has struggled with productivity and we believe we can help to turn that around.”

“目前我們正和DPR建築公司這樣的大公司展開合作，同時我們的客户也包括一家正在建設醫院和醫療辦公樓的大型保健公司”拉德哈表示“Doxel產品的賣點在於服務：從捕捉數據到提供分析應有盡有，按月收費。從隱形飛機領域轉型後，公司計劃發展這項業務。建築行業一直受困於產率問題，我們認為自己足以幫助建築行業解決這一問題。”