I am a Bachelor of Mechatronics Engineering student passionate about robotics and electrical systems. Outside of my studies, I currently work full-time as an industrial electrical apprentice, largely working in factories with automated production line equipment and robots. In my spare time, I enjoy playing golf, mountain biking, reading, cooking, and have recently picked up playing around with microcontrollers. I aspire to find interesting work leading robotics or large scale renewable electrical infrastructure.

Kilian Doyle

 

Collaborative robotics is becoming increasingly important in construction manufacturing, particularly for handling reinforcement bar (rebar) – a market valued at $244 billion globally in 2024 (Grand View Research 2022). Current production lines face a challenge: they must accommodate multiple rebar dimensions which creates challenges in detecting, sorting, and handling, commonly addressed by human sorting. This work presents a solution for a fully autonomous rebar detection and sorting system to address these challenges. The system runs a custom rebar-identification and grasping point suggestion AI model with edge-detecting hardware (Raspberry Pi 5) on a RobotIQ UR3 robot arm. Key contributions of this work include the development of a comprehensive rebar dataset for industrial applications, comparison of industry leading object detection models, the evaluation and proposal of a machine learning model for detecting various rebar types, and the integration to a fully autonomous, end-to-end edge-processing pick and place system. Performance demonstrated 95% pick-and-place success rate with bent rebar and 10-85% with straight rebar, validating the system’s practical capability, along with clear pathways for expansion. The project utilised affordable equipment, including the Raspberry Pi 5 for processing, RGB webcam for vision, and open-source program development. This research contributes to advancing cobot capabilities in smart manufacturing systems and aligns with Industry 5.0 principles, offering construction manufacturers a system to increase operational efficiency and safety in rebar production.