Perth Engineer Creates Robotic Bricklayer

There are many jobs in the construction industry which relies heavily on machinery operated by man to do the job. There are also jobs that can be autonomous with the use of robots, but oddly enough when it comes to laying bricks when building a house, most of the time it is still largely done by hand and manual labor.

Well over in Perth, Australia it seems that a robot might have stolen the job of bricklayers. Developed by an engineer called Mark Pivac, the robot is dubbed Hadrian and it is apparently the world’s first robotic bricklayer. Speaking to PerthNow, Pivac said, “People have been laying bricks for about 6000 years and ever since the industrial revolution, they have tried to automate the bricklaying process.”

“We’re at a technological nexus where a few different technologies have got to the level where it’s now possible to do it, and that’s what we’ve done.” So how does Hadrian work? This will involve the use of 3D CAD which will create a laying program of the house/structure, and then calculates the location of every brick.

The bricks will then be cut and laid from a single, fixed location. So how effective is Hadrian? Given that it is a robot, there will be no need for breaks or medical leave, meaning that within two days, it should be able to raise the brick shell of a house, a lot faster than your average bricklayer.

The robot will be commercialized in Western Australia first, followed by the rest of the country, and finally there will be plans to introduce it to the rest of the world.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Robots
Tags: construction