According to the CIC’s (Construction Intelligence Center) Global 50, the global construction market will be worth $10.3 Trillion in 2020. The profits with an increase in productivity could be huge and that’s why new construction technologies are being developed these days.
Smart Bricks
The Israeli company Kite Bricks is developing a new generation of bricks, called Smart Bricks, built in a high-resistant concrete and designed to be easily joined together. They have internal spaces to work as insulation and to place infrastructural elements.
Using this material, the buildings are supposed to be faster-built, cheaper and stronger than with traditional bricks, according to Kite Bricks. It also reduces the need for additional material such as sand, iron or water.
Although Smart Bricks in the process of development, here you can see a video of a simulation of how these bricks work.
SAM
Sam is a bricklayer robot that can semiautomate the construction of brick walls. This robot is able to lay 3000 bricks a day while the mean of a worker is 500 a day, what makes the robot incredibly attractive because of its speed.
The operation is simple. One operator need to feed the machine with bricks, another has to smooth over the concrete before the robot places more bricks and Sam will do the rest. The robot is composed by a platform that adapts itself to the terrain characteristics, even if they change, a cement pump, the bricks deposit and a robotic arm. Although it costs $500.000, SAM is also cost-efficient as it costs more than seven times less than a worker.
Apis Cor
Finally, here is the first robot that can build a house in 24 hours. This house has been built using mobile 3D printing technology in Russia and its cost has been around $10.000, for a surface of 38 m2.
Apis Cor can rotate 360º around its axis, to go up to 3 meters and has an arm that can be stretched to 8.5 meters. The procedure is the following. All the needed elements for the construction of the house can be easily transported in a truck. Then, the robot is located in the middle of the operations and from them, it moves the arm to print the walls with the cement. This innovative device can solve the problem of having access to an affordable housing, especially in non-developed places.
Is there another innovation in the construction field worth sharing with the community? Please check out the Automation and Robotics Forum to discuss its application on current engineering challenges.
