The Cambridge Handbooks on Construction Robotics series discusses progress in robot systems theory and demonstrates their integration using real systematic applications and projections for off-site as well as on-site building production. In this volume, concepts, technologies, and developments in the field of building-component manufacturing - based on concrete, brick, wood, and steel as building materials and on large-scale prefabrication, which holds the potential to deliver complex components and products - are introduced and discussed. Building-component manufacturing refers to the transformation of parts and low-level components into higher-level components by highly mechanized, automated, or robot-supported industrial settings. The definitions of components are interpreted differently by different industries and even by individual companies; however, these definitions share a common element, that components are more or less a complex combination of individual preexisting parts and/or lower-level components. Pure building-component manufacturing can be distinguished from the transformation of raw materials into parts (such as the production of bricks or simple concrete blocks).
