Video: An Australian company from WA has built a prototype bricklaying machine that can build a house four times faster than a human brickie, just as precisely and with all the necessary cutting and placement all done from a robot that lives on the back of a truck.
The robot, spotted by our compatriots over at Business Insider, is built by Fastbrick Robotics — it does what it says on the tin — and works four times faster than a skilled human bricklayer. The Fastbrick Hadrian 105 can lay 225 bricks per hour, and there’s another prototype in the works that will be able to work more than four times as fast at 1000 bricks per hour.
A laser guidance system means the printer is accurate to 0.5mm, and in the video above the machine uses an adhesive glue rather than mortar — that’s why you can’t see any of the overspill that a trained brickie would An add-on for the Solidworks CAD program should also enable architects to produce machine code for each brick’s position from any house’s 3D model, making the programming process even more hands-off.
From the company: “Fastbrick Robotics aims to make improvements in the areas of speed, accuracy, safety and waste. We will pursue world-first efficiency solutions for the construction industry, and provide the technology for companies to improve their productivity and performance and deliver cost benefits to their customers.” The Hadrian X prototype is around a year away from hitting the market in Australia. [YouTube / Business Insider]