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Ziva is a two-wheeled, image-capturing robot that Casta describes as a temporary closed-circuit TV for jobsites. The robot, which can travel up to 11 mph and has a 12-hour battery life, utilizes cameras and facial recognition software to identify people and vehicles present and if they’re allowed to be in the area — Construction Dive
Developed by British company Casta Spes Technologies, the robot is designed for security surveillance and documentation of construction sites and can autonomously navigate the jobsite. View full entry
Construction software company HoloBuilder Inc. has announced a partnership with Boston Dynamics, maker of mobile robots, to develop SpotWalk, which the firm claims is a first-of-its-kind robotic document capture app for construction sites.
...the robot [can] walk around job sites autonomously and capture 360-degree images that record construction progress, thus creating digital, recordable data of the project over time.
— Construction Dive
According to Construction Dive, Hensel Phelps tested the new technology on a recent project and found its application to be efficient and time-saving. A spokesperson for the contractor said that the robot "removes a time-consuming step while providing accurate construction photos with a high... View full entry
The Australian company promoting the brick- and block-laying robot Hadrian X has entered a series of agreements with housebuilders in Australia and Mexico with a view to getting demonstration homes built.
Fastbrick Australia, a joint venture between Hadrian X inventor Fastbrick Robotics (FBR Ltd) and Australian building supplies company Brickworks Building Products, hopes the agreements will get traction for its “Wall-as-a-Service” concept in the two countries’ sizeable home-building markets.
— Global Construction Review
FBR's Hadrian X robots can build multi-room structures from 3D CAD models with no human intervention. In addition to new contracts with Australian and Mexican entities, the company has also inked deals with builders and fabricators in Saudi Arabia and Austria, among others. A recent... View full entry
According to the team's Kickstarter page, Scribit is a write-and-erase robot that allows you to draw any content sourced from the web—and update it in real time. See the video below for some words from Italian architect Carlo Ratti, the inventor of the new technology: View full entry
The 180-sqm, three bedroom, two bathroom structure was completed in under three days by Hadrian X, a new version of the robot. — Global Construction Review
Designed by an Australian company, Fast Brick Construction, the first version of Hadrian X was unveiled in 2015. Today the robot is capable of building and assessing a house from start to finish. Throughout its testing at the factory, it succeeded at completing a two-course structure, involving... View full entry
An electric exoskeleton that enables the wearer to lift 90kg for extended periods has been introduced by US firm Sarcos, and is due to be commercially available in 2020. [...]
The Guardian XO Max has a strength amplification of 20 to 1, making 45kg feel like 2.3kg. The full weight of the suit and anything being carried is transferred through the suit’s structure to the ground.
— BIM+
According to the manufacturer, American robotics firm Sarcos, the untethered suit's batteries last for up to eight hours on a single charge. Prototype of the Guardian XO Max industrial exoskeleton. Image: Sarcos. View full entry
![[insert Domo Arigato Mister Roboto joke here]](https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/66/66eb58a5517fdc1db4baba28d1068bb0.gif "[insert Domo Arigato Mister Roboto joke here]")
The HRP-5P is a humanoid robot from Japan’s Advanced Industrial Science and Technology institute that can perform common construction tasks including — as we see above — install drywall.
HRP-5P — maybe we can call it Herb? — uses environmental measurement, object detection and motion planning to perform various tasks.
— TechCrunch
Ever had to install large sections of drywall and wondered if there wasn't a machine available that could do that for you while you take care of a bowl of nachos? Well, now there is: Japanese researchers have developed a humanoid worker robot, HRP-5P, which appears to be capable of performing the... View full entry
In San Francisco, autonomous crime-fighting robots that are used to patrol parking lots, sports arenas, and tech company campuses are now being deployed to keep away homeless people. [...]
Last week, the City of San Francisco ordered the SF SPCA to keep its robot off the streets or be fined up to $1,000 per day for operating on sidewalks without a permit [...]
— Business Insider
When you're in Silicon Valley, everything looks like a tech solution. The same logic has been increasingly applied to San Francisco's overwhelming homelessness crisis where a growing legion of security robots — armed with lasers, sensors, cameras, and GPS — have been autonomously patrolling... View full entry
Tybot is a robot recently invented that can tie together steel reinforcement bars saving time and reducing risk in construction projects. Thousands of joints must be tied before pouring the concrete, however this step has traditionally been labor intensive, hazardous, and a cause for major delays... View full entry
Essey is an engineer at Uber and an early adopter of the Internet of things. He can control his lights with his Amazon Echo or an array of touchpad sensors he has installed throughout the home. Sensors tell him when there's water in the basement or a leak under the sink.
While Essey's setup might sound a little like science fiction, it's a prototype of the future. Some critics are worried these devices won't be secure and that companies will use them to spy on us to make money.
— NPR
As the Internet of things becomes more ingrained in our daily lives, some people are turning ordinary homes into smart homes. One way of doing that is by integrating smart appliances (dishwasher, fridges, microwaves, toasters, etc). That strategy, however, can be expensive and not very... View full entry
The Roomba robotic vacuum has been whizzing across floors for years, but its future may lie more in collecting data than dirt.
That data is of the spatial variety: the dimensions of a room as well as distances between sofas, tables, lamps and other home furnishings. To a tech industry eager to push “smart” homes controlled by a variety of Internet-enabled devices, that space is the next frontier.
— Venture Beat
Most of the available on the market 'smart home' devices, including lighting, thermostats and security cameras are still quite primitive when it comes to understanding their physical environment. All robovacs use short-range infrared or laser sensors to detect and avoid obstacles, but iRobot in... View full entry
On April 15, 2015, University of Michigan's President Mark Schlissel and Taubman College Architecture and Urban Planning Dean Monica Ponce de Leon broke ground with donor, A. Alfred Taubman on the new wing of the Art & Architecture building. [...]
The ceremonial shoveling of the ground was performed by Taubman College's Kuka robot, normally used for architectural digital fabrication research, painted maize and blue for the occasion.
— Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
Previously: University of Michigan revives plan for architecture school addition and doubles budget to $28MAlso, don't miss our recent Dean's List feature with Monica Ponce de Leon, the Dean at UM's Taubman College. View full entry
Are you in a hurry to catch your flight and still need to find a parking place? Meet Ray, a shiny robot that parks your car at Düsseldorf Airport in Germany.
Ray makes sure you don’t have to park miles away from the terminal, eliminating the hassle of finding a parking place. Just drop off your car within a few meters from the check-in area [...]. When you come back from a holiday or business trip, the robot will make sure your car is ready to go when you walk out of the airport.
— popupcity.net
The disaster at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant marked the beginning of the "Robotics Challenge." Developers were rankled by how helpless robots were as they wandered through the radioactively contaminated reactor building. As they swerved around aimlessly in the steam, cables broke and the operators lost contact with the robots. [...]
They compiled a list of eight tasks that robots would have to master in the future to be capable of performing well in disaster response.
— spiegel.de
Husband-and-wife team, and 2012 SCI-Arc graduates, Liz and Kyle von Hasseln are the recipients of the inaugural Gehry Prize. The couple was recently presented with the prize for their outstanding masters thesis Phantom Geometry, a unique 3D printing method developed in the SCI-Arc Robot House with advisers Devyn Weiser and Peter Testa. This summer, the school had received a $100,000 gift from architect and SCI-Arc trustee Frank Gehry for the establishment of the institute's annual Gehry Prize. — bustler.net
Previously in the Archinect News: Frank Gehry establishes annual "Gehry Prize" for SCI-Arc View full entry
