Page 65 - Build 152

Technology
3D printed structure at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee.
become cumbersome and lose their essential agility. Latest thinking has small drones working together to share the load and lift more.
A recent project by Swiss architects Gramazio & Kohler and Italian roboticist Ra aello D’Andrea saw 50 ying drones build a structurally stable, 183 cm tower out of 1,500 small blocks. Multiple motion- capture sensors fed information into a eet management programme that organised the drones, avoiding collisions and opting for best-case paths for fast payload pickup and release.
In New Zealand, drones have been used to survey earthquake damage both above a ected suburbs and inside landmark buildings such as the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Christchurch. Robot demolition
Demolition does not require the complexity and precision of construction, and robots are already active on site.
Sweden’s ERO Concrete Recycling Robot uses water jets to reduce concrete into aggregate slush that is suctioned away, leaving behind the steel rebar that can be recycled. The robots can scan a site environment and collectively determine the most time-e ective deconstruction sequence.
Robot bricklayer
The Hadrian robot of Perth-based Fastbrick Robotics can lay up to 1,000 bricks per hour and construct an entire detached house
within 2 days. A commercial version of the machine is expected to be on the market at the end of 2016.
Using a 3D CAD representation of the home, it loads, cuts, routes and places the bricks in sequence using a 28 m telescopic boom. Mortar is delivered under pressure to the head of the boom. For precise placement, the boom auto-corrects itself 1,000 times per second to prevent vibrations or sway. It currently runs o an exca- vator, but the finished version will sit on a small truck for easy movement across the site.
Maintenance robots
Beyond construction, robots are being developed for maintenance work on city streets.
In the UK, the University of Leeds is pioneering a $9 billion project to create a suite of robots and drones that live within cities. Some robots under development will perch like birds and repair streetlights. Others will live in utility pipes while performing never-ending inspec- tion, repair and reporting tasks.
Progress in New Zealand
The University of Auckland’s Dermott McMeel is a researcher in design and digital media and part of the AEC Futures think tank that is looking at how new technology can best t the local industry.
Build 152 — February/March 2016 — 63
FEATURE SECTION
PHOTO – CARLOS JONES