Artaban Plascencia Padilla

Artaban Plascencia Padilla completed a Master of Science in Civil (Cross-disciplinary) Engineering at the University of Alberta in 2026, supervised by Dr. Yuxiang Chen. His thesis developed an autonomous robotic masonry system that finds, picks and places concrete masonry units using a single wrist-mounted stereo camera and a machine-learning detector, in place of the laser trackers, LiDAR and fiducial markers that existing block-laying robots depend on.

Working with a UR20 collaborative robot, he built the full pipeline: a YOLOv8 block detector trained on synthetic images, a point-cloud pose estimator based on RANSAC plane fitting and principal component analysis, and an image-based alignment check before each grasp. In laboratory trials the system assembled running-bond wall sections at arbitrary headings from a single operator-placed reference block, with about 70% of joints within the CSA A371 tolerance of 10 ± 3 mm. The work was part of the NSERC-supported project Robotic Wall Construction Using Innovative Building Blocks and Processes for Enhanced Productivity, Safety, and Sustainability.