Moderator:
Chris Atkinson | Office of the Secretary

Session Description
The Advanced Research Projects Agency – Infrastructure (ARPA-I) in the US Department of Transportation was authorized by Congress in part to develop new materials and construction methods for transportation infrastructure. Our mobility across all transportation modes is critically dependent on our nation’s physical infrastructure – the roads, bridges, ports, airports, pipelines, and transit and rail systems that facilitate the safe, efficient and accessible movement of people, goods and services. The emerging combination of automation and robotic construction methods will transform infrastructure construction. The further addition of advanced AI techniques for infrastructure design, planning and siting will upend our current methods of infrastructure construction that are slow and increasingly costly, and not responsive to emerging threats like climate resilience. We propose a session that will explore the combination of robotics, automation and additive construction in building new transportation infrastructure. The audience will gain new insights and perspectives into the current state of the art of these methods, their future opportunities and challenges, and what work needs to be done to overcome these challenges.