Construction Robotics and Human–Robot Teams Research Methods

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper is interesting and sound, and the topic is relevant to this journal. However, I suggest a few modifications before acceptance.

I think the paper can benefit from a typical related-work section or at least a paragraph containing a comparison with similar review articles, so that the novelty of your analysis compared to the current state of the art is highlighted.

The exposition in Section 4 is sound, but it could be organized under subheadings for more clarity. For example, the subheadings could refer to the initial research objectives presented in section 1.1, to maintain the original structure of the text.

Please read through the paper and fix punctuations, such as missing spaces, semicolons used instead of colons, etc.

Please review attentively all the figures, as some are difficult to read or have mistakes in them (e.g. Figure 1 "Analyrical techniques", Figure 9 "Axis title")

Lines 145-147 should be deleted.

Author Response

1. Thank you to the reviewers for the comment and suggested revisions.
2.  The section on typical related work is discussed in pg 2, line 42-58.
3. The exposition in section 4 has been categorized under subheadings as seen in line 531
4. Punctuations have been fixed.
5. The mistakes in the figures have also been corrected
6. Lines 145-147 have been deleted.

Reviewer 2 Report

this article is well written and a good start for future analysis. however publications and citation indices alone can no tell the whole story. e.g. when i started construction robotics research and development 43 years ago, my first submissions to journals were rejected since no body thought of its relevance!

so for the first my first 5 years i actually developped construction robots during my doctotorate at university of tokyo without being able to publish internationally. so my dissertation and my first conference papers were only published in japan!

Author Response

Great thanks to the reviewer; the comment has been noted for subsequent studies

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript is well written.

I have only minor concerns which should be addressed.

1. An important portion of the introduction is of textbook like style, which could explain the length of the manuscript. Could this be shortened? E.g. What in Fig. 1 is new knowledge? Could one just refer to the published knowledge (e.g. ... methodology of research is reported in [1] ... In addition to what is reported by [1] we here suggest ...).

2. Statement in line 41 - 44 is better founded if research is compared to domains outside the own one. As written below, one could point to other domains, where human-robot collaboration is well studied, as a contrast to the domain investigated in the manuscript. Example: Cobots in industry (refs:10-12, & Cardoso, A.; Colim, A.; Bicho, E.; Braga, A.C.; Menozzi, M.; Arezes, P. Ergonomics and Human Factors as a Requirement to Implement Safer Collaborative RoboticWorkstations: A Literature Review. Safety 2021, 7, 71. https://doi.org/10.3390/safety7040071).

3. On line 65: AEC is not defined. Abbreviation should be written out before it is used for the first time.

4. Please check for repeated statements. The statement in lines 79-84 is already included in the text above.

5. Line 114: considering instead of consider?

6. Chapter 2.1 & Figure 2: should note the date when the search was run.

7. Figure 4: The reader would appreciate if captions of figures include more information. Some additional explanation about what this graph shows is needed. What do the colors represent? What does the location within the graph represent? Axes are not labelled.

8. Subtitle 3.6 (and following): why capitalizations?

9. Line 598: List an example here for the statement.

10. Table 4: Is it necessary to report this cross-tabulation necessary considering that only few entries are not 0.

11: Page 21, 1st sentence ("On the nature..."): Sentence unclear. Maybe a verb is missing?

12:  Page 25, subtitle 5.2: Sub-title not the same format as the other sub-titles.

Author Response

Thank you to the reviewer for the comments. They have been addressed.

1. The introduction has been shortened, and figure 1 is removed from the article.
2. Statement in lines 41-44 has been removed from the study.
3. On line 65, AEC has been defined
4. The statement in lines 79-84 has been removed
5. Line 114 has been corrected.
6. The date the search was conducted has also been indicated in the study.
7. The figures and captions have been updated.
8. The capitalisations in subtitle 3.6 have been removed
9. Line 598 has been improved.
10. Table 4 is retained as it was considered important to report the entries with 0 and those without zeros as it presents a complete story. Furthermore, limiting the entries to those without zeros will defeat the need for the table which is critical to presenting the analytical output. Similar studies also followed the same convention.
11. Page 21, 1st sentence has been improved
12. Page 25, subtitle 5.2 has been improved.
13.