A new technology in robotics could mean big changes to the ways of the traditional building industry. The TERMES project is a group of small robots that are able to act independently of one another to achieve a common goal, similar to the way that an ant or termite colony work to build a hill out of soil.
Check out this video of the robots at work:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmQOEaXIAnU]
From Gigaom:
The robots work with the help of just four sensors, which keeps their cost down. They are also capable of climbing the height of one brick, which means they can use the bricks as stairs to build very tall structures.
The big idea here is that the robots would be programmed with the final blueprint of what structure needs to be built, and without someone needing to individually program each robot, the structure would be built with very little oversight. Each robot knows what the next step is, based on the progress of the other robots in its team.
When combined with a technology such as 3D printing and the evolution of using sustainable materials in building, the process could eliminate an enormous amount of carbon emissions from the traditional building process.
This all looks great, especially the fact that it’s sustainable… But it’s ANOTHER case of robots/technology replacing what a human can do. What happens when these become the industry norm (along with drones). Has/will anyone sit down & think of what the unemployed workers will do..? Another time-bomb ticking away which is not being addressed by anyone…
Yes… I like the direction, but it should take much less energy and time to build stuff. For example, in nature, DNA has 3 billion base pairs and can replicate with almost no errors in several hours. See my blog at greenprojectmanage.wordpress.com.
Yes this is a good move but what have to our human workforce this is implemented