The first of its kind, an autonomous robot with a large gripper can construct large stone walls without the use of mortar. The robot, which has been equipped with lidar to create its own 3D map of the construction site, has successfully built a stone wall 6 meters high and 65 meters long in a public park in Zurich, Switzerland. Additionally, it autonomously transformed the park’s terrain into terraces using a large shovel.
The robot’s mechanism involves scanning and grappling each irregularly-shaped stone to determine its placement. The digital mapping and AI-powered analyses allow the robot to place stones almost perfectly most of the time, with just a one-tenth of a meter median positional error.
While the robot’s stone placement rate is 10% slower than experienced human machine operators, who average 11 minutes per stone placement, it eliminates the need for additional workers and manual positioning of visual markers. It also reduces the need for workers to add supporting stones, gravel, and dirt, making the process more efficient.
Though a human still supervises the robot and drives it between locations on the active construction site for safety reasons, the researchers are aiming to enable the robot to operate fully autonomously and safely alongside others.
Robot Constructor Automates Construction of Massive Stone Walls
