BUILD Home Builder Awards 2023 8 Les Companions. Now, Antoine feels it is finally ready to start making its mark on the construction industry. During our talk with Antoine, he emphasises the fact that it isn’t a tool to replace humans, but rather to complement the human. It is all about collaboration between man and machine, as Antoine states, “It’s really another tool for the painter alongside brush, roller and airless. The painter is at the centre of the process, PACO achieves what is dull, repetitive, painful, and the painter does all the final works and decision making. That’s the collaboration that we want to put into place with PACO.” PACO has been tested on several working sites of different types, from industrial to offices and used by companies with different culture, from the 10-employees decorating business to the more structured sub-contractor. The working constraints and the ways of working can be very different. PACO serves as a much-needed assistant in an industry that suffers from a shortage of skilled workers. This shortage makes human time all the more costly, so workers shouldn’t be spending time on the mundane tasks. Once programmed, PACO, with its state-of-the-art algorithms and proprietary developments, will get on with the paint job while skilled employees focus on the skilled tasks. Not only this, but PACO has the ability to paint faster than a human, enabling the efficient meeting of deadlines. PACO is designed with painters and construction companies in mind, to solve the daily struggles that come with paint tasks for large refurbishments and new builds – first of which is how repetitive a task painting is. Painting all day everyday can cause physical pain for an individual, as Antoine shares, “You always do the same gesture at work, you have repetitive strain injuries (RSI), and it’s difficult. I’ve got an uncle who was a painter doing this all day long and he had to stop painting at 50, which is The painting industry is facing many different constraints and stresses, from reduced margins to hard working conditions, and high pressure on delays. Due to the complexity of the sites, and the diversity of the works and of the environments, painting is a very skilled trade with not much room for errors and inefficiencies, rate require labor with the right skills to succeed. Though, despite of the very strong need, companies have a hard time recruiting labor with the right know and there is a shortage of skilled labor: in the UK 61 percent of the painting business managers struggle to hire. Not far from being available on the market, PACO, the painting robot has undergone extensive R&D and several prototypes in the five years since Antoine Rennuit launched Most Innovative Painting Robotics Company - Europe Meet PACO, the painting robot that adapts to users’ needs and eliminates the pains of repetitive painting work. Engineered by Les Companions, which was founded by Antoine Rennuit in 2018, this patented technology is the bridge between robotics and construction. We chat with Antoine to learn more about this intelligent device and how “it has never been easier to collaborate with a machine”. T Jan23635 “We know there are a lot of pains in this industry and some of these pains, we can solve through robotics.”
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