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Robo-builder threatens the brickie

2007-06-06 10:52:40

The Sunday Times January 14, 2007

Robert Booth

IS THE writing on the wall for the brickie? Engineers are racing to unveil the

world s first robot capable of building a house at the touch of a button.

The first prototype a watertight shell of a two-storey house built in 24

hours without a single builder on site will be erected in California before

April.

A rival design, being pioneered in the East Midlands, with ?1.2m of government

funding, will include sunken baths, fireplaces and cornices. There are even

plans for robots to supplant painters and decorators by spraying colourful

frescoes at an affordable price.

By building almost an entire house from just two materials concrete and

gypsum the robots will eliminate the need for dozens of traditional

components, including floorboards, wooden window frames and possibly even

wallpaper. It may eventually be possible to use specially treated gypsum

instead of glass window panes.

Engineers on both projects say the robots will not only cut costs and avoid

human delays but liberate the normal family homes from the conventional designs

of pitched roofs, right-angled walls and rectangular windows.

The architectural options will explode, predicted Dr Behrokh Khoshnevis at

the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, who will soon unleash his

$1.5m (?940,000) robot. We will be able to build curves and domes as easily as

straight walls.

Your shoes, clothes and car are already made automatically, but your house is

built by hand and it doesn t make sense.

At Loughborough University s School of Mechanical and Manufacturing

Engineering, the technology is being backed by a ?1.2m grant from the

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

It involves computer-controlled robotic nozzles which pipe quick-drying liquid

gypsum and concrete to form walls, floors and roofs.

Inspired by the inkjet printer, the technology goes far beyond the techniques

already used for prefabricated homes. This will remove all the limitations of

traditional building, said Hugh Whitehead of the architecture firm Foster &

Partners, which designed the Gherkin skyscraper in London and is producing

designs for the Loughborough team. Anything you can dream you can build.

The robots are rigged to a metal frame, enabling them to shuttle in three

dimensions and assemble the structure of the house layer by layer. The sole

foreman on site operates a computer programmed with the designer s plans.

The researchers in Los Angeles claim their robot will be able to build the

shell of a house in 24 hours. Compared to a conventional house, the speed of

construction will be increased 200-fold and the building costs will be reduced

to a fifth of what they are today, said Khoshnevis.

The rival British system is likely to take at least a week but will include

more sophisticated design features, with the computer s nozzle weaving in ducts

for water pipes, electrical wiring and ventilation within the panels of gypsum

or concrete.

Jala El-Ali, structural designer at Buro Happold the firm that helped design

Arsenal s new football stadium, which is shaped like a flying saucer said

future homes could carry features borrowed from ant hills, honeycombs or sea

shells.

Dr Rupert Soar, in charge of the project at Loughborough, has travelled to

Namibia to seek inspiration from termites, which construct giant mounds by

regurgitating earth in intricate designs.

If you ask a bricklayer to lay bricks in anything other than a straight line,

you ll run into problems, said Soar. But if you ask the robot to make a

squiggly line it really doesn t care.

The robots will also create a smaller carbon footprint than conventional

building methods; and, theoretically, a family could grind down a spare room

when the children leave home.

However, the robot appears to be afflicted by all-too-human obstacles. While

the Americans first robot-built home is predicting a completion date of April,

the Loughborough prototype is unlikely to be built for at least five years.