Robotic Bricklayer Can Build A House in Two Days

Yes, robots are taking over a worrisome number of jobs, but it’s like my Uncle Murray used to say — don’t worry, you can always get work as a bricklayer.

Oops, check that. An Australian engineer has developed an industrial-sized brick-laying robot that can put down hundreds of bricks per hour, 24 hours a day, with superhuman precision.

The giant robot is named Hadrian, after the Roman empire who assembled a massive defensive wall in northern England to keep out formidable Scottish highlanders. (Good policy, that.) Engineer Marc Pivac put more than a decade of research and development into the system, which he’s now shopping around to potential commercial partners.

Hadrian begins by using computer-aided design (CAD) to determine the precise placement of every brick in a given structure — to within one hundredth of an inch. Hadrian then cuts its own individual bricks and shuttles them along the articulated arm of a 28-meter-long telescopic boom.

http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/robotic-bricklayer-can-build-a-house-in-two-days-150630.htm