An Australian company built a brick-laying robot it says can build a home in a fraction of the time it takes a normal construction crew.
Fastbrick Robotics’ Hadrian X, which works off of a 3D model, can lay more than 1,000 bricks per hour, Business Insider reported.
The machine cuts its own bricks and applies adhesive to them, feeding the pieces along a conveyer belt to a robotic arm that lays them in place.
A normal construction crew can build a home in four to six weeks, but Fastrbick Robotics claims its Hadrian X can complete the shell of a home in just two days.
The company plans to build its first house – a three-bedroom, two-bath where the interiors will be finished by humans – later this year. But it’s not sure when the Hadrian X will be commercially available.
When it does hit the market, though, Fastbrick thinks it can disrupt the multi-trillion dollar global construction industry.
In the United States, there’s already a shortage of bricklayers.
“Young people no longer see brick-laying as an attractive career due to the dull, dirty, and dangerous nature of the work,” said Keil Chivers, Fastbrick’s director of corporate affairs. [Business Insider] — Rich Bockmann