Scaffolding Robot: LIFTBOT, Hoists and ABB

How the scaffolding robot is taking heavy lifting off scaffolders, from rope hoists and tube couplers to KEWAZO's LIFTBOT and where ABB robots could fit in.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

10/25/20266 min read

Every scaffold that goes up has to come down again, and on many sites the tubes, boards and fittings still travel by hand, passed along a chain of workers or hauled on a rope over a wheel. A scaffolding robot takes over that lifting. This post follows scaffolding from timber poles and rope knots to the steel tube and coupler, then through winches, ladder lifts and cranes to KEWAZO's battery-powered LIFTBOT, which now works on refinery and city scaffolds. It ends with where ABB robots, which already build homes on site, could fit, and with what still slows the change.

Worker in white standing on a metal scaffold tower in front of an ornate stone facade
Worker in white standing on a metal scaffold tower in front of an ornate stone facade

A worker on a scaffold tower in front of a building on the Dam in Amsterdam, 2010. Photo: FaceMePLS / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

How scaffolds went up by rope and by hand

Scaffolds are older than written history. Sockets in the walls around the cave paintings at Lascaux suggest that a scaffold was used to paint the ceiling more than 17,000 years ago, and the Berlin Foundry Cup shows scaffolding in ancient Greece in the early fifth century BC. For a very long time scaffolds were made of wood and secured with rope knots. In parts of Asia they still are: bamboo scaffolds remain one of the six main types in use today, especially in China, India and Hong Kong, where crews put them up and take them down by hand.

Man working on the bamboo poles of a scaffold beside a shop front with green netting above
Man working on the bamboo poles of a scaffold beside a shop front with green netting above

A construction worker building a bamboo scaffolding in Hong Kong, 2010. Photo: Clément Bucco-Lechat / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Steel changed the trade. David Henry Jones and Daniel Palmer Jones patented the Scaffixer coupler in 1907 or 1910, a fitting far stronger than rope, and it gained publicity during the 1913 reconstruction of Buckingham Palace. Their Universal Coupler of 1919 became the industry standard, while steel tubes of standard sizes made parts interchangeable. SGB brought the first frame system to market in 1944 for postwar rebuilding, and in the mid-1950s a basic 24-pound unit let a couple of labourers put up a scaffold without nuts or bolts. The parts still had to reach each level, often by hand.

Black and white photo of a man on tube scaffolding high above the rooftops of Amsterdam
Black and white photo of a man on tube scaffolding high above the rooftops of Amsterdam

A scaffolder at the top of the Westertoren in Amsterdam, 2 April 1952. Photo: Ben van Meerendonk / AHF, IISG via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Machines helped at the edges. In 1942 the California Shipbuilding Corporation in Los Angeles used a motorized hoisting truck to move scaffolding timbers around its yard. On building sites, rope-and-wheel hoists, electric winches, ladder lifts and Manitou baskets took loads up, and cranes lifted larger scaffold sections, though every method had its limits. At BASF's Ludwigshafen site, the crane used to build a 52-metre flare scaffold had to stop whenever the wind rose past safe limits. On a busy Dublin street, traditional manual chain-lining was a poor fit because traffic had to keep moving and footpaths had to stay clear.

Black and white photo of a small hoisting truck on a shipyard quay beside a large ship hull
Black and white photo of a small hoisting truck on a shipyard quay beside a large ship hull

A motorized hoisting truck used to move scaffolding timbers around the California Shipbuilding Corporation yard in Los Angeles, April 1942. Photo: Farm Security Administration / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

LIFTBOT and the robots now carrying scaffold parts

One robot built for this job comes from KEWAZO, a company based near Munich and in Houston. Its LIFTBOT is a battery-powered, remote-controlled lifting robot, originally designed for scaffold assembly, that runs on rails installed along the scaffold. KEWAZO says it sets up in about 20 minutes and lifts material at 138 feet per minute, and its rotating basket swings loads inboard so that scaffolders do not have to lean out. In March 2026 the company said LIFTBOT was working at more than 20 industrial sites in Europe and North America. In September it built its first UK sales team and planned to demonstrate the robot at the ScaffEx show in Manchester on 10 and 11 September.

Winch wheel and cable hanging on the outside of a scaffold covered with grey netting
Winch wheel and cable hanging on the outside of a scaffold covered with grey netting

An electric site winch with a steel cable and a bucket hoist on a netted scaffold, 2023. Photo: Leo Miregalitheo / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

KEWAZO's case studies give the numbers. At BASF in Ludwigshafen, LIFTBOT took down the 52-metre flare scaffold in an ATEX zone under a hot work permit after a few hours of setup, including 50 metres of rail, with 30 percent fewer man-hours and no pauses for wind. Altrad's crew at Dow's site in Barry, South Wales, has used one since 2023 and cut person-hours by a third. In the City of London, MR Scaffolding used LIFTBOT on a 72-metre cladding repair tower of about 19 lifts, where its battery meant no mains cables. In Dublin a church restoration needed four workers instead of the seven to ten first estimated.

Blue spreader beam and red hook lifting a lattice of scaffold tubes against a blue sky
Blue spreader beam and red hook lifting a lattice of scaffold tubes against a blue sky

A truck crane lifts a scaffold section on a spreader beam during dismantling at the north tower of Cologne Cathedral, 2013. Photo: Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

We found no ABB robot on scaffolding, so ABB's role here is a possibility. ABB argues that robots can make construction safer by handling large and heavy loads, and says only 55 percent of construction companies use robots, against 84 percent in automotive and 79 percent in manufacturing. Its robots already work at building sites. In Pacific Palisades, ABB IRB 6710 robots and RobotStudio run inside Cosmic's mobile microfactory, making structural wall panels with millimetre precision to rebuild homes lost in the 2025 wildfires. At ground level, an ABB Flexley Mover P604 AMR, which maps its surroundings with Visual SLAM, could carry tubes and boards from the delivery bay to the foot of a lift.

White ABB robot arm lifting a long timber board inside a tent workshop with framing tables
White ABB robot arm lifting a long timber board inside a tent workshop with framing tables

An ABB robot places timber in Cosmic's mobile microfactory, which uses ABB IRB 6710 robots to build wall panels for homes in Pacific Palisades. Photo: ABB

Where scaffolding robots go next

Safety may be the strongest argument for these machines. On 22 October 2026 a Belfast scaffolding firm was fined £20,000 after a metal scaffold board about 2.4 metres long fell some eight metres during dismantling in December 2024 and struck a collection driver, who later died. Northern Ireland's safety inspector urged firms to bring scaffold components down by a controlled method and to keep clear exclusion zones. On the London job, a site operative said the basket that rotates into the scaffold mitigates any chance of materials falling. Since 2024 LIFTBOT has also carried loads for insulation, painting and equipment transport.

Worker in a yellow helmet standing among bamboo scaffold poles on a tall white building
Worker in a yellow helmet standing among bamboo scaffold poles on a tall white building

A worker dismantling a bamboo scaffolding on a building facade in Hong Kong, 2012. Photo: Clément Bucco-Lechat / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

For homes and city buildings, a lifting robot helps keep streets open. In Dublin, LIFTBOT moved scaffold parts up a 19th-century church tower while pedestrians passed safely under a gantry, and the London tower stayed fully operational with its public walkways live. In refineries the target is the turnaround. KEWAZO says an FCC turnaround at FHR's Pine Bend refinery finished a full 12-hour shift ahead of schedule with a lifting robot moving material, and that a Gulf Coast refinery runs its CUI programme with about 30 percent fewer man-hours and no crane. More on factory-built homes is in our post on home construction microfactories.

Two ceiling-mounted ABB robot arms assembling a wooden frame structure
Two ceiling-mounted ABB robot arms assembling a wooden frame structure

ABB robots assembling a timber frame module for the DFAB HOUSE at ETH Zurich. Photo: Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich / ABB

Robots will not take scaffolders off the job soon. KEWAZO itself says refineries, petrochemical plants and scaffolding work are too unstructured and too safety-critical for full autonomy, and it presents LIFTBOT as a machine that extends what a worker can do. People are scarce, too: KEWAZO cites the Associated General Contractors of America finding that 92 percent of US construction firms have trouble filling positions. Crews also need training first. "Once the robot arrived on site and training was done, we could immediately see the potential," said James Ball, who managed the Dow Barry site for Altrad. Assembly itself is still done by scaffolders' hands.

Industrial robot arm on a tracked base next to a tall curved mesh wall under a scaffold roof
Industrial robot arm on a tracked base next to a tall curved mesh wall under a scaffold roof

ETH Zurich's In situ Fabricator, an ABB IRB 4600 on a tracked base, building a curved wall. Photo: Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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