Intelligent Automation and Robotic Systems in Construction and Infrastructure

A special issue of Buildings (ISSN 2075-5309). This special issue belongs to the section "Construction Management, and Computers & Digitization".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 March 2027 | Viewed by 207

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Interests: embodied AI; construction robotics; LLM agents for infrastructure maintenance; digtial twin; computer vision

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Guest Editor
School of Civil Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211800, China
Interests: human–machine collaboration; structural resilience assessment; VR-based competency enhancement systems; intelligent operation and maintenance of prefabricated structures
Key Laboratory of C&PC Structures of Ministry of Education, School of Civil Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 211189, China
Interests: vision-based measurement; structural health monitoring; intelligent maintenance; bridge; damage identification

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The construction and infrastructure sectors face mounting pressure from labor shortages, aging assets, and stagnant productivity, while advances in robotics, embodied AI, and large language models open transformative pathways for the field. This Special Issue invites contributions that advance intelligent automation and robotic systems across the full lifecycle of construction and infrastructure—from on-site fabrication and assembly to inspection, maintenance, and operation.

We particularly welcome work on embodied AI and human–robot collaboration, including autonomous and semi-autonomous robots for construction tasks, mobile manipulation in unstructured environments, and active perception guided by structural or domain priors. We equally encourage submissions on intelligent automation more broadly, such as LLM-based agents for AEC workflows, vision-language models for inspection and reporting, and multi-agent systems coordinating heterogeneous platforms. Both methodological contributions and field-validated case studies are welcome.

We hope that this collection will bring together researchers from civil engineering, robotics, and artificial intelligence to shape the next generation of intelligent construction and infrastructure systems.

Prof. Dr. Zhengyi Chen
Dr. Lei Zhang
Dr. Wenkang Du
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Buildings is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • embodied AI
  • construction robotics
  • human–robot collaboration
  • autonomous inspection
  • active perception
  • LLM agents
  • mobile manipulation
  • digital twin

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Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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