AE Industry Dashboard: Volume 12, Issue 1

Technology Corner

Could a Robot Dog Become the Industry’s Best Friend?

Dog days ahead

It’s appeared on TV programs from 60 Minutes to The Book of Boba Fett, and soon Spot—the unique quadruped robot manufactured by Boston Dynamics—could be coming to a jobsite near you. Resembling a canine and moving on four legs, the agile, semi-autonomous robot can climb stairs, cross rugged terrain, and navigate areas difficult or hazardous for people to access. By performing time-consuming tasks with greater speed and precision, Spot holds the potential for freeing up staff members to focus on more critical tasks. 

Spot the benefits

Boston Dynamics touts Spot’s ability to automate the monitoring of construction project progress and accuracy, capture 360-degree images and video, and collect 3D and 4D data that can be used to produce digital twins by attaching customized sensor payloads, laser scanners, and software to the robot dog. General contractor Swinerton found that Spot could scan 50,000 square feet in as little as 20 minutes.

Aye, robot

The only design firm to participate in Spot’s early adopter program, Foster + Partners equipped the robot to scan and capture data on two projects—a renovation of its London office and a mixed-use project as part of the Battersea Power Station development. Instead of having to maneuver cumbersome scanning equipment around its jobsites, a tedious task that could eat up man hours, the firm used Spot to automate and streamline the process. The company reported time-saving benefits from the robot’s ability to both remember geolocations from previous visits and embed metadata in each scan, which Foster + Partners used to quantify progress and ensure the built project was accurate to the intended design.

Power of the dog

In its testing of Spot’s capabilities, Foster + Partners reported that the robot can be noisy when walking and that its battery capacity could be an impediment in scanning large spaces, deficiencies it noted could be resolved by improvements in movement mechanics and a new feature to power up autonomously through a charging dock. 

Growth plans

A global survey of more than 6,000 business and IT executives by Accenture in December 2020 and January 2021 found 18% scaling up digital twins and 24% experimenting with the technology. Those numbers are sure to rise as EY forecasts the global digital twin market to grow from $3.1 billion in 2020 to $48.2 billion in 2026.

The New Workplace

Taming Burnout Goes Beyond Overwork

Staff depletion

Along with unleashing a global pandemic, COVID-19 has exacerbated an epidemic of worker burnout.More than 75% of U.S. workers surveyed by the Conference Board in September 2021 said thatstress and burnout were big challenges to their well-being at work, up from 55% six months prior. Amid the Great Resignation, that mental exhaustion is driving employees out the door as workers who experience burnout are nearly three times more likely to be actively job hunting, according to research by polling firm Gallup. 

Self-control

Research has shown that burnout is the result of more than simply the number of hours worked—it’s about an absence of control. “A lack of autonomy puts people on a fast track to burnout,” wrote Liz Fosslien, head of content at Humu, for the MIT Sloan Management Review in August 2021. According to a December 2021 Wall Street Journal article, research by Gallup suggests that “the greatest determinant of worker burnout isn’t the number of hours worked, but factors such as unmanageable workloads, unclear communication, and lack of manager support.” In addition, a study of more than 3,000 Wisconsin residents that was published in the January 2021 issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology found that work stressors are more likely to cause depression and death in jobs in which workers have little control.

Extinguishing the burnout

If overwork isn’t the primary cause of burnout, mandatory vacation days, blackout hours, and four-day workweeks will likely offer only fleeting results because they don’t address the fundamental cause of burnout. Instead, give employees more control over their workdays. “Employers have to give permission to employees to craft their roles,” recommends Jennifer Moss, author of The Burnout Epidemic. This will require considerable dialogue with staff since individual preferences will vary from person to person. As remote work expands, some employees may want more control over when and where they work. Others will want more autonomy in how they work and what they work on. This doesn’t mean inviting a free-for-all. It does mean building systems in which smart, responsible people will self-manage and self-organize in ways that help them take better care of themselves, each other, clients, and the company.

Speak to the (micro)managers.

“Employees who experience burnout are three times more likely to feel micromanaged,” writes Moss. Employees are more engaged and motivated when they are given authority to make decisions for themselves, which means firm leaders looking to tame outbreaks of burnout should be vigilant for any instances of micromanagement inside their organization.