Spain's ShieldBot Building Energy-Efficiency Retrofit Robotics Project Receives €3.99 Million in EU Funding

en.Wedoany.com Reported - On October 30, ShieldBot, a European building energy-efficiency retrofit project led by Spanish technology research center IDEKO, announced its R&D progress. The project plans to use robots, drones, and digital technologies to develop equipment for building exterior wall inspection, insulation material installation, and interior renovation. The project has received €3.9943 million in funding from the EU's Horizon Europe program, with an implementation period of 3 years, from November 1, 2025 to October 31, 2028. Participants include 11 research institutions, universities, and enterprises from 6 countries.

The project plans to develop and test three types of robotic systems, targeting building interior construction, facade inspection, and exterior wall insulation installation, respectively. Among them, a flexible indoor robot will be used for assembly and insulation work inside buildings; drones and climbing robots will be responsible for inspecting building exterior walls and identifying areas that need repair or additional insulation layers; a cable-driven parallel robot will be used for installing insulation materials on building exterior walls, reducing the need for traditional scaffolding and lowering the operational risks for workers at height. The project will evaluate the applicability of different robots in building energy-efficiency retrofits through demonstration tests in real-world scenarios.

Digital systems are also part of the project's R&D scope. The project will combine Building Information Modeling (BIM), digital twins, and artificial intelligence algorithms to plan and manage robotic construction tasks, and will use sensors, machine vision, and motion control technologies to enable robots to adapt to changes in building exterior wall shapes, construction environments, and on-site conditions. For insulation materials, the project will test bio-based materials and recycled materials, exploring solutions to reduce construction waste and the use of traditional building materials.

IDEKO is responsible for the scientific and technical coordination of the project, with its R&D work focusing on mechatronics, vibration control, machine vision, and sensor technologies to improve robot motion stability, positioning accuracy, and environmental adaptability in non-standard building environments. Other participants include the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau, the University of Nottingham in the UK, Nantes Université and the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, Bouygues Construction and NEO-ECO, Robotnik in Spain, NEO-ECO in Ukraine, and AUSTRALO in Estonia. All parties will carry out joint R&D on robotic platforms, building construction technologies, digital systems, and sustainable insulation materials.

Ultimately, the project will validate the application capabilities of the three types of robotic systems in exterior wall insulation installation, building facade inspection, and interior renovation through real-world scenario tests.