Background and motivation

The construction industry is characterized by repetitive, physically demanding, and safety-critical activities, while facing increasing demands for productivity, sustainability, and quality. Mobile robots provide substantial potential to address the challenges, but reliable robot navigation in the built environment requires the integration of perception, localization, navigation, and motion planning into real construction processes rather than isolated laboratory settings. To address the challenge in a structured educational setting, the course "Scientific Working in Engineering", offered by the Institute of Digital and Autonomous Construction, is opened as an ECIU@TUHH micromodule. The micromodule, funded by the European Union within the Erasmus+ program, is offered to Master's students from partner universities of ECIU University and is implemented as an international, interdisciplinary learning project within the framework of ECIU's challenge-based education approach.

Objectives

The micromodule enables students to evaluate robotic systems as integral components of construction processes and to design, implement, and critically assess robotics- and AI-based solutions. The students learn how to work scientifically, conduct structured literature research, formulate research problems, and develop agile project plans that lead to simulation- and experiment-based implementations. The technical focus includes vision-based perception using state-of-the-art sensor systems, multimodal scene representation, localization, navigation, motion planning, and human–robot interaction. An example of robotic obstacle-avoidance behavior in a related research context is shown in Figure 1. During the so called "mobility phase", in which the international students will visit Hamburg, student teams will implement and validate the solutions on site.

Expected outcomes

The micromodule will resuls in a robotic demonstrator, a structured scientific paper to be written by the students under detailed guidance provided by the instructors, a pitch-style presentation, and an individual oral assessment ensuring transparent attribution of learning outcomes. The students will get the chance to present their papers at an international conference. In summary, the micromodule is expected to strengthen interdisciplinary competence at the interface of civil engineering, robotics, and artificial intelligence.