Page 64 - Build 152

Technology
Change is just a drone away
Change is all around us as technology advances at speed. One thing is for sure, the way buildings are conceived and constructed, and who puts them up, is being turned on its head.
BY PHIL STEWART, FREELANCE WRITER, TECHNICAL AND ENGINEERING WRITING, AUCKLAND
ROBOTS AND DRONES as part of the site workforce and buildings fabricated by 3D printers are the future of the construction industry. If these new technologies sound fanciful at the moment, you are in for a surprise – it’s happening around the world right now.
What’s there and will soon be here?
In New Zealand, the push for new construction technology is happening rstly in universities and innovative digital fabrication workshops. Those leading the way have clear aims that our industry will be quick to adopt digital technology to build better houses faster and more economically.
In the US and Europe, there’s plenty of examples of these newly emerged technologies, and with the fast pace of uptake these days, some are already here.
3D printed building components
In September 2015, the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee unveiled a 12 × 4 m 3D-printed building. The building demonstrates how a 3D-printed wall structure of single composite material can integrate all functions for structure, insulation, air barrier and exterior cladding.
This approach could lead to reduced material consumption and buildings that can be ground up and reprinted for new uses.
Digital fabrication for building components
In 2014, the Landesgartenschau Exhibition Hall in Germany was pieced together using 243 50 mm-thick plywood panels – each of which was geometrically unique. The panels were cut on a 7-axis CNC machine and precisely nished by a robot arm. Each panel has nger joints that were interlocked during on-site construction – with a total of 7,600 joints tted together.
Absolute precision of the fabrication enabled the pieces to be connected without di culty.
Drones for surveying and mapping
Drones are well established site workers for performing surveying and mapping tasks on construction sites. Construction machinery maker Komatsu has teamed up with San Francisco-based Skycatch to enable drones to conduct ongoing surveys and produce 3D models of worksites.
Survey data feeds into live interactive maps of the site, giving continuous real-time displays of what is being built. These displays can be checked against plans or used to make measurements of completed structures.
Drones for building
The next step for drones will be actually lending a hand by autono- mously carrying materials around worksites. It is currently possible to build drones large enough to carry meaningful payloads, but they
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