My Robot Built A House On The Moon
Researchers at the University of Southern California have developed a robot that can independently build concrete foundations and structures. Building five inches every seconds, the robot squeezes liquid concrete from a tube and smoothes it with a trowel.
With constant housing shortages in refugee camps around the world, many technologists hold out hope that fabrication technologies, like this robot, will be able to quickly assemble structures from on-site materials and alleviate a global housing crisis.
In addition to building a self-supporting wall, the robot can also manipulate concrete into a variety of sculptural shapes. Behrokh Khoshnevis, the lead engineer on the project, hopes to translate this dexterity into building more complex structural elements.
The goal is to place the device on cleared ground and set it to work. It would spit out concrete to create hollow walls. It will then fill the spaces with insulating concrete inserting plumbing, wiring, and ventilations shafts as is goes. Beams would then be placed by the device forming floors and a roof. The hope is that structures could quickly be assembled on site with a minimum of human intervention.
This kind of on-site construction adds a new twist to a growing market of prefabricated structures. Both IKEA and Muji have offered prefab houses for the style conscious and many other options are also available. Many current options are prohibitively expensive for the average consumer but like many green technologies, prefab is being revived as eco-couture.
Hopefully, as these technologies mature they will find broader applications. Prefabricated structures can offer a more environmentally friendly solution to low-income and refugee housing all over the world.
This on-site fabricating robot, however, answers the inevitable question of transport. If a robot could be helicoptered in to a disaster area and immediately be set to work constructing housing out of local dust and dirt it might dramatically improve the survival rate in refugee camps.
If I were a refugee living in a UNHCR tent this technology would offer me a dramatically improved standard of living. In a world where an increasing portion of humanity exists in a semipermanent refugee situation, we need to think seriously about long-term needs of refugees.
Fabrication technologies like this robot and other equipment developed on the framework of modelers could offer a key to this crisis.
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Who is this guy?
technology is truly amazing. It would be great to see it put to some good along the lines you suggest.
I can't believe it, my co-worker just bought a car for $81628. Isn't that crazy!