Monday, November 11, 2024
M.E. Rinker, Sr. School of Construction Management Assistant Professor Aladdin Alwisy, Ph.D., was honored as one of six Invention of the Year award winners this past Wednesday at the University of Florida Innovate | Tech Licensing’s seventh annual Standing InnOvation event. The annual happening honored and celebrated innovators and their work at UF in fiscal year 2024.
Every construction design is unique, making mass production difficult. Builders face inconsistencies with a project’s quality and costs. Alwisy’s accolades stem from design-manufacturing digitalization software for multi-functional robotic stations in industrialized construction. Through this, he is working to make construction faster and better through a simple solution – robots.
“It is a great honor to receive this award, which recognizes the transformative potential of construction robotics to reshape the industry,” Alwisy said. “The construction industry is at the verge of a technological revolution. By streamlining the design-to-manufacturing process of our intelligent, multifunctional robotic systems, we’re empowering robots to work seamlessly alongside human teams, accelerating construction timelines and enhancing project quality.”
The robotic system standardizes the construction process, ensuring consistent performance regardless of the complexity of the task. However, Alwisy takes this robotic system further and integrates software. Early adopters of robotics have faced the challenge of modifying the design and manufacturing strategy to achieve customized building. This software links the design and transfers the manufacturing strategy to the robot, showing them how to build and design each component. This entire robotic system is flexible and multifunctional, enabling the manufacturing industry to become more automated and efficient.
As part of his Ph.D. research, doctoral candidate Ben Tehrani also helped in the development of the software.
“Could we call this the ‘Golden Goose’ of construction manufacturing? I would say yes,” Alwisy said.
More than 200 innovators and entrepreneurs gathered for the event Alwisy was honored at. Since its inception in 2018, Standing InnOvation gives a much-deserved “standing ovation” to the UF innovators who disclosed, licensed or optioned technologies in the fiscal year that ended June 30. This year, innovators disclosed 372 technologies, licensed 121 and started nine companies.
PHOTO CREDIT: SCAD Media