Toward Frequent Robotic Digitalization of Construction Sites: A Field-Grounded Roadmap

Construction sites remain a sparse source of digital information, even though up-to-date knowledge of site conditions underpin planning, progress control, and safety. This paper contributes a field-grounded roadmap toward frequent robotic digitalization of construction sites. It shifts attention from robotic capture capability to the capture-to-consumption chain required for operational use and treats organizational consumption as the primary driver of digitalization frequency. The roadmap is presented as a hypothesis rather than a validated finding and is grounded in a longitudinal embedded single-case study of a large, multi-year renovation project in Sweden. The study included weekly inspections during periods over two years using a quadruped uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV), comparison sprints with helmet-mounted capture, and a test of BIM-anchored digital site utilization plan (SUP) revision. No operational frequency target was aimed for or achieved. Instead, the study aimed to identify capabilities and constraints that must be addressed and tested to enable such operation. In particular, the paper proposes the SUP as a bidirectional interface that both receives robot-derived revisions and provides machine-readable routes, constraints, and reporting requirements for robotic operation.