Interlocking sheet piling has been a staple of construction technology for a little more than a century but pounding these panels into the ground requires a lot of heavy equipment, people and substantial jobsite logistics.
Now researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed a robot that can autonomously drive interlocking steel sheet piles into soil. The robot runs on wheels and thus has a light footprint with minimal jobsite disruption.
According to the Harvard engineers, conventional sheet pile driving processes are extremely energy intensive and environmentally disruptive. Only a fraction of the weight of a typical pile driving machine is used in applying downward force. The Wyss team’s “Romu” robot leverages its own weight to drive sheet piles into the ground.
To see how the Romu robot goes about its work, click on the video below.
The Romu robot grips a sheet pile and then lowers its chassis, pressing the pile into the soil using an on-board vibratory hammer. By gripping the pile repeatedly at higher positions it can drive a pile much taller than its own range of vertical motion and repeat until the piling is sunk to the desired depth. Even more interesting is that the Romu robots are designed to work in teams, swarming the jobsite, and working together to quickly to build a barrier or surround a structure.
