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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.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Saturday June 27 2015, @05:45PM
One of my gripes with USA houses is how dependent they are on timber, when materials like brick are a viable alternative. Living in Phoenix stresses this; there are not many trees locally so I would imagine that other materials would dominate, which is not the case.
I also am curious how this automated bricklaying compares with other techniques, such as poured concrete, or prefab walls. If we are moving into the realm of autmated construction, perhaps the fundamental approach should be reconsidered instead of adapting technology to a technique predating history.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2015, @08:46PM
Bricks are a poor choice in earthquake zones.
...and with all the fracking going on, the range of earthquake zones is expanding.
Now, while you're thinking "California", let me remind you that the largest[1] of earthquakes in the USA had as its epicenter New Madrid, Missouri.
[1] It changed the course of the Mississippi River in Mark Twain's time.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2015, @09:07PM
I live in a brick house. We know how unstable it is. One significant crack and a shift will drop a whole wall, crushing everything right down to the basement. It happened once when the house was settling during a prolonged construction. Now I do not live in a traditional earthquake zone, but after two middling magnitude quakes in the last few years when the previous recorded quake was a century ago and only a ~2 I now have very cheap earthquake insurance.
The argument about if fracking causes earthquakes feels just like the argument about if smoking causes cancer. The evidence is piled high and deep, but nobody with power is willing to forego profit for human life.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Sunday June 28 2015, @05:57AM
Wood is renewable resource, and more carbon neutral than making bricks + mortar.
Secondly, wood is now cheaper in North America than it was 15 years ago. Might have something to do with rampaging Mountain Pine Beetle (thank you global warming! - yes, sarcastic)