Robot builds walls 6 times faster than bricklayers

Robot construction skills could threaten to take away millions of jobs on construction sites in the near future.

Construction Robotics Company in New York, USA has just developed a semi-automatic robot named Sam that can build 3,000 bricks a day, 6 times the average productivity of normal bricklayers, Sun reported yesterday.

The robot consists of a conveyor belt, a robotic arm, and a mortar pumping system. Robot Sam requires a worker to stack bricks on its rack. After this step, the robotic arm will pick up each brick, bring it down the pump nozzle to coat it with mortar before placing it in position on the wall. A mason then simply scrapes off the mortar on the wall before the robot stacks more bricks.

Robots like Sam have already begun to be used on construction sites in the US, prompting experts to fear that they could put millions of construction workers out of work in the next two years. "Robots will soon be on construction sites, doing the work of humans but at a faster pace," said Richard Valentine-Selsey, a construction consultant.

According to VNE