Concrete-Jet Robot Prints Out Houses
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Friday, 5 of September , 2008 at 3:32 am
Not that I know anything about real estate, but I’m guessing that one of the reasons that houses are so expensive is that they require a lot of hands-on work by a bunch of skilled (and expensive) humans. And generally, houses are complicated, especially if you want one with all sorts of exciting peaks and angles and crevices and secret passages. If you’re just looking for something basic and cheap with some walls and a roof to keep vampire bats from sucking your blood while you sleep, Contour Crafting is developing a robot that’s able to “print” three dimensional structures, using what is essentially inkjet technology, except on a larger scale and with concrete:
The little guy at the end of the video is designed to ride on top of the structure he’s building, reducing the need for any sort of infrastructure at all, which is pretty cool if you ask me. Ultimately, the robots will even be capable of installing plumbing and electrical systems as part of the process, and will be able to build any type of self-supporting structure than can be modeled in a CAD program. Caterpillar has kicked in a bunch of money toward developing this technology, and you can understand why:
The overarching vision… is to develop the science and engineering needed for rapid automated fabrication of objects of various size up to mega-scale structures such as boats, industrial objects, public art and whole building structures.
The grand challenge for CRAFT is building a custom-designed house in a day while drastically reducing the costs, injuries, waste and environmental impact associated with traditional construction… whether it be to provide affordable housing… extraterrestrial buildings constructed from in situ materials… [or] curved organic designs rather than straight surfaces.
That’s right, extraterrestrial. NASA is apparently interested in using robots like this to build structures on the moon and on Mars without the astronauts having to lift a finger, or even having to be there, for that matter. But in the short term, I’ll happily settle for a customized house at a projected 1/5 the cost of a conventionally built structure. Although, if the robot had its way, I’d probably end up with 5,000 outlets and no bathroom.
[ Contour Crafting ] VIA [ The Register ]
Category: Industrial
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