Posted on 07/27/2016 2:19:10 PM PDT by Red Badger
Building a house by robot. Image: Supplied.
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Fastbrick Robotics, an ASX-listed company based in Perth, has created a robot brick layer, a form of 3D printing which can create the shell of a house without being touched by human hands.
The Hadrian 105 robot, named after the Roman emperor who built a wall in ancient Britain, has hit a bricklaying speed of 225 standard brick equivalents per hour, or about half a day’s work for a top human bricklayer.
To prove it, the company released a time lapse video, showing the robot at work. Here’s the robot, doing everything with one arm, laying over-sized bricks, following a laser guided system:
The demonstration was designed to ensure that all of the complex characteristics of a brick house can be handled by the Hadrian 105 robot.
The vision at Fastbrick Robotics is to create a machine which can complete the brickwork of a home in three days at lower cost and higher quality than traditional methods.
The company has started building the next prototype, Hadrian X, which will have a capacity of up to 1,000 standard brick equivalents an hour via a 30 metre boom, with everything being delivered to a building site on the back of a truck.
That is double the daily output of a top bricklayer in just one hour.
“We are a frontier technology company, and we’re one step closer to bringing fully automated, end-to-end 3D printing brick construction into the mainstream,” says Fastbrick CEO Mike Pivac.
“We’re very excited to be taking the world-first technology we proved with the Hadrian 105 demonstrator and manufacturing a state-of-the-art machine.”
The bricklaying market in Australia, UK, US and Canada is worth about $12 billion.
Fastbrick Robotics says the competitive advantages with its system include savings in time and costs plus better quality and safety of construction.
The housing boom has pushed up the cost of bricklayers in Australia. In Sydney, the cost of laying 1000 bricks is about $1500 and heading to $2000.
At 300 to 500 bricks a day, a brickie can earn between $600 and $1000.
Brickworks Ltd, in its latest half year profit results, said: “The strong demand on the east coast is resulting in trade shortages.”
Fastbrick listed on the ASX in November in a reverse takeover of DMY Capital. An oversubscribed IPO raised $5.75 million at 2 cents a share.
It’s currently trading at 2.2 cents but has been as high as 3.6 cents.
Yeah. That would help... A lot!
Very apt description of what's being flogged.
Always amazed when a single purpose prototype is touted as the ultimate utopian solution, global in its impact. A finished masonry wall built in accordance to building code standards and insurance requirements is more complex than a single course of concrete block. The simple drawing below shows the various most common components, but by no means all of them.
It's not about speed doing a singular task, other components are added to the wall system as construction progresses. Sure a bullet train could approach the speed of sound in an express run from Chicago to San Francisco if there are no stops along the way. Same with this wall system, there are pauses to install the continuous horizontal steel reinforcing at code determined intervals, steel tie backs to steel or concrete building frames, inserts for air intake and exhuast grille frames, door and window frames, and a host of other things that a brick mason does in stride because of his mobility.
Sure the machine will be further developed and find it's uses, but for now it seems like the nice video is to entice investors not providing a real world usable system at competitive prices.
Oh, and as far as I know there is no universal "contruction glue" and mortar is not amenable to pumping through a "tube".
Depending on who is programming it
Yeah, but can it do the zoning and permit bribes anywhere near as quickly as the average contractor
The robot’s stacking bricks 0 0 let’s see the mortar...
That’s more like what I was expecting.
A central pillar-mounted arm would be the appropriate configuration.
Where’s the roller that tamps the brick pavers down to insure proper mortar bedding...it ain’t carpet.
It is a failure. It is dry stacked on a perfectly level slab. No foundation, no mortar, no horizontal or vertical rebar or rebar tie. A total piece of crap!
Interesting.
They’re dry-laid on crushed stone or stone dust, but surely there’s a roller/compactor to follow it. It’s a German machine - never seen one here - and I’ve laid miles of brick and pavers over the years.
For really interesting gargantuan gadget see the railroad tie, track layer.
Well, we now know how to build the wall cheaply and quickly.
But can it Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport? he he You have to be aged to get it...
An invention like this shows how our worldly betters despise us. Just another Goliath, easily taken down with one well-directed stone.
It uses glue.......
Robots are just doing what Australians don’t want to do... /s
Bones under bricks.
A brick house with no mortar.
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