In order to solve the labor shortage and long working hours that are issues at construction sites, we have developed a system that can significantly reduce personnel and inspection time by inspecting reinforcing bars such as bridges and tunnels.

This system was developed by three companies, including a major general contractor and an electronics manufacturer, and is used to inspect whether the reinforcing bars that increase the strength of concrete are correctly placed when constructing bridges, tunnels, buildings, etc.

The device is equipped with three cameras that can extract the three-dimensional position information of reinforcing bars from captured images and measure the thickness, number of reinforcing bars, and intervals in about 3 seconds.

With the new system, one person can do the work that used to be done by three people, and the inspection time can be reduced from 3 hours to 5 hours, which is expected to be reduced by about 3%.

The system will be used at construction sites starting next month.

At the press conference, Mr. Hidefumi Kakegawa, General Manager of Shimizu Corporation's Technical Research Institute, said, "At construction sites, the reduction of working hours and the shortage of workers are issues, and we would like to contribute to improving productivity by promoting work style reforms."

In the construction industry, where labor shortages are becoming more serious, there is an urgent need to eliminate long working hours due to penalties for exceeding the upper limit of overtime work from next year, and each company is jointly developing technologies to reduce the burden on the site, such as automatic material transport robots.