Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
An Australian engineering firm called Fastbrick Robotics has built a new machine that it claims is able to build a full-sized, standard brick home within just one to three days.
The robot, called Hadrian X, is said to be able to lay around 1,000 bricks per hour.
Fastbrick Robotics says it built the machine in order to try and address crippling labor shortages in the building industry, which have become increasingly acute in recent years. Such shortages are said to be one of the main reasons behind the decline in new single-family home construction in both Australia and the U.S.
The number of single-family builders in the U.S. reporting labor and subcontractor shortages reached a record high in July 2018.
Hadrian X has sa far only been tested on prototyped homes built inside a factory, but the owners say they’re ready to test their machine’s skills on homes built outdoors, albeit still within a controlled environment. The robot will be set to work on a new three-bedroom, two-bathroom home, the company said.
“The house design will be a little different this time, with a few more internal walls to construct and a higher level of difficulty,” Mark Pivac, chief technology officer at Fastbrick, wrote in a blog post. “After completion of the structure, we will conduct some finishing work to trial different renders, veneers, wall linings, roof ties, and so forth.” The company has set up cameras to allow online viewers to watch the progress and receive updates of the robot-constructed house on Fastbrick’s blog.
Watch Hadrian X in action in the clip below:
