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posted by martyb on Saturday June 27 2015, @04:11PM   Printer-friendly
from the how-about-a-nice-game-of-breakout? dept.

An Australian engineer has built a robot that can build houses in two hours [days -Ed.], and could work every day to build houses for people.

Human housebuilders have to work for four to six weeks to put a house together, and have to take weekends and holidays. The robot can work much more quickly and doesn't need to take breaks.

Hadrian could take the jobs of human bricklayers. But its creator, Mark Pivac, told PerthNow that it was a response to the lack of available workers — the average age of the industry is getting much higher, and the robot might be able to fill some of that gap.

[...] Hadrian works by laying 1000 bricks an hour, letting it put up 150 houses a year.

It takes a design of the house and then works out where all of the bricks need to go, before cutting and laying each of them. It has a 28-foot arm, which is used to set and mortar the brick, and means that it doesn't need to move during the laying.

Throw in a brick-making bot and the stage is set for guerilla housing construction. Homelessness would become a thing of the past.

Apparently from: perthnow.com; a video is available on youtube.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Saturday June 27 2015, @04:34PM

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday June 27 2015, @04:34PM (#202107) Journal

    A robot voice reads the same text that appears in the Summary above, while the screen zooms in and out of still shots carefully selected to NOT show a single thing about how it works. The Youtube must have been created by a robot.

    Just in time for the obsolescence of brick houses they automate the process.

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  • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Saturday June 27 2015, @05:40PM

    by richtopia (3160) on Saturday June 27 2015, @05:40PM (#202149) Homepage Journal

    Where is the +1 True Story mod?

  • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday June 28 2015, @02:58AM

    by dry (223) on Sunday June 28 2015, @02:58AM (#202319) Journal

    What makes you think that brick houses are becoming obsolete? They're cheap and simple to create and make good houses unless in earthquake country.
    Of course this robot should work just as well with any rectangular building block, even Styrofoam, just use glue instead of mortar.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday June 28 2015, @03:16AM

      by frojack (1554) on Sunday June 28 2015, @03:16AM (#202323) Journal

      Pretty much the earthquake issue. (Same as the tsunami issue, floods, etc).
      Some places are outlawing brick only houses, brick buildings over one story, etc.
      Other building codes are being tightened to require more re-rod.

      The bricks shown have no holes for re-rod.

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      • (Score: 2, Funny) by Paradise Pete on Monday June 29 2015, @04:43PM

        by Paradise Pete (1806) on Monday June 29 2015, @04:43PM (#202879)

        Some places are outlawing brick only houses, brick buildings over one story, etc.

        Mayor Big Bad Wolf was unavailable for comment.

    • (Score: 2, Informative) by riT-k0MA on Sunday June 28 2015, @06:37AM

      by riT-k0MA (88) on Sunday June 28 2015, @06:37AM (#202360)

      My father is a builder/construction project manager. He's currently building a polystyrene house for a client. After chatting to him I can confirm that the construction costs of the house are much higher than a traditional brick house and construction time is much, much longer. Just plastering the walls took about as long as building the shell of a normal house (cement does not stick to polystyrene when wet, requiring special, and costly, alternative techniques).

      Furthermore, plumbing becomes a nightmare simply because hot water pipes can actually melt polystyrene. This means that you need to insulate the pipes going through the walls, requiring large gaps in the blocks to put the pipes (and their insulation) into, which in turn weakens the structure.

      And then there's mitigating the risk of fires. Polystyrene is made from oil and forms a bonfire pretty quickly.

      Also, not much is currently known about the durability of a polystyrene house. How long is it going to last? There are some mud-brick houses in the area that date back to the 1800's, and they're still standing.

      Oh, and did I mention that the walls are filled with costly iron rebars for reinforcing? Polystyrene on it's own is pretty weak.

      • (Score: 2) by joshuajon on Sunday June 28 2015, @07:28PM

        by joshuajon (807) on Sunday June 28 2015, @07:28PM (#202484)

        You make it sound like an utterly terrible material. Did you try to talk your dad out of building it?!

        • (Score: 1) by riT-k0MA on Monday June 29 2015, @05:23AM

          by riT-k0MA (88) on Monday June 29 2015, @05:23AM (#202647)

          The client gets what the client wants...

          • (Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday June 29 2015, @01:33PM

            by Alfred (4006) on Monday June 29 2015, @01:33PM (#202777) Journal
            The client gets what the client pays for.