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Contour Crafting - Extrude-a-House
lww writes "An article in New Scientist discusses the work of Behrokh Khoshnevis at the University of Southern California to design and build a fully automated robot that performs Contour Crafting, his name for a process to extrude successive layers of semi-fluid building mixtures like concrete to create entire structures. In the article, he says 'The goal is to be able to completely construct a one-story, 2000-square foot home on site, in one day and without using human hands.' by 2005. I'm pretty jazzed at the potential to construct buildings with highly curved/creative contours that would be impossible using current construction techniques."
Boy, and I thought houses in housing developments were too cookie-cutter now.
The bigotry of the nonbeliever is for me nearly as funny as the bigotry of the believer. - Albert Einstein
Now, all I have to do is get Fred out of the way...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Matt Helm did this in 1967 in his movie with an inflatable bedroom.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I am moving to Mars where they still build houses the old fashion way. Wait... what? ..... Aww crap
This may be able to construct a house in one day, but I can't see getting this gadget set up in that time. This thing is huge!
Stay tuned for new sig...
At first I read that as "Extrude-a-Horse." I was picturing some unfortunate horse being turned to goo as it was extruded through a small pinhole. Ick.
ex'trude v. ex'trud'ed, ex'trud'ing, ex'trudes
v. tr. 1. To push or thrust out.
Boy, the trolls are going to have a field day with this one.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
Would anyone ever be proud to say "a robot shat my home"? These things will likely replace trailer-houses: the Cletus Delroy's of the future can say "Hey Maw! We're movin' to a brand spankin' new droid-turd!"
But what about windows? Having really contoured surfaces dont do so well if you want to put in a window, custom glass costs a boat load....
Not to mention they make awkward living spaces inside; it just seems that boxes work so much better in house design, although I would love curvature in the corner points in my rooms (a nice, soft, apple-like look).
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Try getting something like this pushed past the trade unions. You might wake up with a horse head under your sheets.
Th
So it will only take a day to build a house, and with no human hands...but then, you still have to build a big gantry crane over the site, and set up the robot. This thing isn't going to do in-wall plumbing and electricity either. There would still be a LOT of work after the robot did its union minimum.
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Try getting something like this pushed past the trade unions. You might wake up with a horse head under your sheets.
Or during the night one of the house-crapping bots extrudes an entire 64-unit condo into your bedroom.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Put this on a flatbed truck, then give me a Tiberium Harvester, some Nod buggies, stealth tanks, and I'll be in business!
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Fortunately, I downloaded the movies and made a BitTorrent version available:Enjoy.
0x0D 0x0A
It looks like this sort of technology is actually targeted at just the "smaller" buildings, like houses.
It would seem that this is because it is essentially a "print-a-house" device, which will be limited by the size of the "printer" as well as the type of materials that can be used for "ink." No steel buildings here, only ceramics, some plastics, or adobe-type products.
One thing that struck me funny is that they cited "construction of structures on Moon and Mars" as a possible application, but I simply can't see how it'd be a better option than, say, inflatables.
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This would be nice for a home with no infratructure. How does it tie in to sewer lines, electric grids, etc? This isn't even mentioning teh internal infrastructure - all teh 14guage wiring, the three way switches, the copper feed and pvc drain pipes, etc.
Also, how does it get all the city bureaucrats on site in one day to do all the
This sounds like the flying cars we were all promised.
The video shows girders neatly and precisely arranged in preparation for the construction. The labor involved in lugging these onsite and then ordering them fussily along the ground, in addition to the laying of tracks for the giant house-plotter, would seem to be better spent actually building a real house instead of one made out of the semi-liquid gak that Hordak poured onto He-Man.
If I could make this sig kill you, I would.
Sure it's cool that a robot might build a house in a day, but would you really want to live in it?
Personally, I'd rather have my house built by 100 Amish carpenters over the course of one year.
I may be a Luddite, in this respect, but I'm also a big believer in TLC.
- jbum
EBTX had this idea a long, long time ago:
http://www.ebtx.com/mech/mech05.htm
True, this guy didn't actually have the materials in mind, but we ought to give him credit for coming up with it first.
Here's another such robotic builder concept.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Negative! There's an alternative building process called cobbing that allows for free-form walls. A group called Cobworks is currently building a cob house in Mexico that's got a number of curved walls.
Curved walls are nowhere near impossible. And placing windows in them is nowhere near impossible either. Furniture and home decoration obviously also has to be bought to fit or placed properly in rooms (i.e. no six foot long paintings hung on a curved wall).
If you want to see some beautiful uses of curves and non-right-angles in architecture, check out the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA. It is truly beautiful, and the kind of thing which could not possibly have been built even 15 years ago because the computer modeling technology wasn't there. But that is a place you go to spend a few hours once a month, not to live there, and it was built with plenty of open space around it, not packed in like a house.
But I think this house-creating technology is cool and I'm sure it will find uses in more spread-out areas where there is room to be creative.
The logical next step is P2P architecture, right?
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The animation shows the machine making a framed structure on a prepared lot. Stick framing can already be done in a day (albeit with a few sets of human hands involved). The thing that takes time in building a house is the wiring, plumbing, hvac, and finishing.
I don't see much future for this until they can automate some of these functions.
(This sig intentionally left blank)
Now the rest of the country will look like Southern California-pink, beige, and stucco.
This guy is way out there
This seems to be a larger version (albeit by an order of magnitudes) of the kind of technology that has been employed in rapid prototyping and model making for manufacturing an other applications for quite some time. See, for example this and this.
I've finally got around to changing my sig
Looks like he'll have to extrude-a-server while he's at it.
Whatever format this machine has, it's likely going to have to be mounted on a framework with all construction carried out inside the confines of the frame. Now, were the construction material especially fast-drying, sturdy, and lightweight, it might be economical to produce structures in a factory and haul them to location. But for anything larger than a small home, it seems likely that a portable on-site scaffolding-like frame would be necessary. I wonder what sort of calibration issues might arise from such a necessity: the temperature, stability, angle, and many other factors would all affect the construction. Sounds to me like the best idea would be to lay down a concrete floor first the conventional way, with attachment points for the machine, then bring it in, turn it on, wait, and move it on to the next site. No matter how this is done, houses are not going to be constructed in a single day: you'd still need the foundation, the flooring, the roofing, the electrical and plumbing systems, doors, paint, windows, bathroom fixtures, and a myriad of other things to all be installed. As it is, pouring concrete and constructing the walls of a house is by no means the most time-consuming part of making a new home. IANAE, but I really doubt that implementation of this technology would shorten the construction time of an average structure by more than a day or two.
Can't we just feed code from Second Life into this thing?
The idea is cool for things that are extruded surfaces, but... how do you get any tinsile strength out of it? How do you put in vertical elements that are not concrete, but integrated into the structure? The site pre-casting idea is neat, but there isn't anything showing how it would stand up to seismic, or even strong wind loads. I know... work in progress.
It's actually very close to building with stone, only you use a liquid instead.
Lug this giant pooper into a destitute region of SA or China, and lay down inexpensive shelter for an entire town. Encourage corporate sponsorship - no joke - I'm sure Pepsi wouldn't mind putting up some cash for this process, if each house built had a big pepsi logo carved into it.
Of course, people destitute enough to live in a soft-serve house probably aren't too embroiled in the cola wars. Ebola wars, maybe.
If I could make this sig kill you, I would.
The desire to have curved pool walls, which cost a fortune in concrete formwork would be where this could make in-roads if it were able to work around reinforcing steel(unreinforced concrete isn't that crash hot for any serious structural works, especially in any areas of seismicity).
Curved walls may well look pretty, but are a nuisance to work around if you are trying to fit beds, couches, tables against them. One of the bonuses of straight walls iwth square corners.
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For windows and doors, even in a curved surface, you justspecify a flat flange to install them to. Still have to install them, though. Also the interior door. But what about foundations? Still gotta dig the hole and fill it with something heavy, rigid and stable. How do you tie it down to the foundation? Tie rods? You would still need rebar in the structure itself to attach the tie rods to. Here in California (and a lot of other places), you also need sufficient reinforcing in the structure itself to handle seismic loads, and those have to be connected via rods or bolts to the foundation. What about wiring and plumbing? They are typically enclosed inside the walls, for safety and aesthetics. How do you imbed a complete wiring and plumbing system into the walls? Perhaps you could program the machine to actually form the waste piping, but you still need a water supply. Chases in the structure? Then you have the issue of pulling piping and wiring through a complex system of chases. Ventilation, heat and cooling? Same issues. This looks potentially cool, but building the structure is only one small part of building a house, and saving some money there doesnt necessarilly save you anything on the entire structure.
Instead of having this thing crap out fancy-schmancy concrete ugliness with many different curves, it could be greatly beneficial in the way we currently use construction robots on assembly lines: mass production. Specifically, for those unable to afford houses constructed traditionally. Think of it: Rather than sending a boatload of materials and hundreds of workers to some poor, third-world country (or impoverished urban area), just ship one or ten of these suckers out there, along with one or two operators per, and mix the raw materials on-site. In a week you'll be housing five hundred families. Of course this assumes several years of R&D before then, such that the process will be cheap, the raw materials commonplace and easily available, and little problems like pipes and windows are solved. You may laugh at a bunch of cookie-cutter houses all slapped down in a row, but I bet the homeless wouldn't. You could call it Habitat for Robotity...
Reminds me of this place.
I remember 20+ years ago touring a house constructed from a durable, high-strength foam. It was located in Gatlinburg, TN and was called "Xanadu - House of the Future". I recall that it was constructed by inflating large, plastic dome-like balloons and then spraying those balloons with the hardening foam. Builders then subsequently went in with saws and simply chopped out wherever they wanted a doorway, hall, or secret passageway to be. I remember being totally blown away when, towards the end of the tour, they had an Atari 2600 (playing that Snoopy vs. the Red Baron game) and color TV embedded in the wall. Plus, it had a slide/tunnel to get from the kids' room upstairs down to the den.
Good times... good times. (obligatory Homestarrunner reference =)
Cheers..
m@
Not unless someone screwed up. in poured structures, the reinforcement, wiring chases, plumbing, ventilation, all the things necesary to turn a structure into an office or home, are laid into the walls before the pour. Fixing a mistake later, by drilling for example. is hideously expensive, and has sent more than one contractor into bankruptcy.
some chain hotels are built using premodular components today.. entire guestrooms, with plumbing and all. the make'em, put them on a barge, and install them on a foundation(i.e. in NYC it's a godsend)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The same guy is working on using plastics and metal also. The main innovation is his use of the moving extruder and trowels to smooth the surface of the object.
The moving extruder enables you to build items bigger than the tank of goo that previous laser powered rapid prototyping setups used.
The trowels let you produce a smooth finished item. Other systems result in a stack of disks (cross sections). To minimize the stack of disks surface, you make the cross sections very very thin but this means there are thousands of cross sections and it takes a long time. With the trowels you can spit out thick tubes and smooth it out later.
Other than houses they say you can build boats (not from adobe, duh, from plastic). Think of other smooth shells.
When this thing goes off patent in 20 years, I can see people setting up a robot in some big commercial garage building. You create a CAD design at home and bring it down to the garage. They extrude out an item and you bring it home. You can trade designs on the internet. Someone should start an Open Source design program now to be ready with a standard file format.
list things that would be easy to make.
Anything big hollow and plastic, ceramic or metal:
Plastic child's wading pool for the back yard.
Kids play set.
Kayaks, Canoes, snow sleds.
Garbage cans.
Patio Furniture
Frisbees
Hoola-hoops
Custom computer case mods could get really crazy.
Dishes or cookware?
Think of your own. It's fun.
Now the whole issue of open source and software patents can be brought to the masses. When the blue prints for a physical structure are the valuable part because an auto-builder just reads 'em and builds the house, what is the valuable part? :)
After all, that's how software works. you write some blueprints, and an auto-builder (compiler) makes it into a binary. Could this be the start of finallly making the playing field even? (watch for big companies to start sueing for features in the blue print "just like the feature in our blue print". Can't put in bathroom because then you'd HAVE to have seen our blueprint to build one that works like ours...
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
this could completely change the way things are done. As I see it this machine could build a dog house for (a totally wild guess) $50,000, or a big honking ranch style house for $65,000. The expense is still going to be in site preparation and getting the equipment in place. No surprise, right?
I think that once designers get a handle on what this machine can do that they will come up with ways to build houses that will seriously cut down on finish work and systems installation. What about cast in place air ducting, and cast in place conduits? Finish work would be a snap. Believe me, when you hire an experienced stucco crew you'd better be ready for them because you go to lunch and they'll have the job done before you get back. That stuff can be done a lot faster than the vapor barrier-rigid insulation, siding, paint system.
And as far as insulation goes, what' stopping them from extruding that also? Air entrained concrete with those little expanded poly beads is great insulation! If you want to go farther, it wouldn't be hard to cast in little notches to hang interior sheating and then pump insulation behind that.
I spent a summer with a fist full of rebar ties in one hand and a tool in the other, and it wasn't a lot of fun. If you can trade a lot of little hand labor, for a couple of days of guys with heavy equipment, it might be worth it. Who knows.
One thing's for sure, building houses this way isn't going to be done by ma & pop construction outfits.
My experience with concrete is very small, but this could be big, if it isn't a scam and we can get the building codes people to buy it.
Why do I have this? I don't smoke.
Man, don't go in the bathroom! I just "extruded a house."
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I'll give you that one. Strong work.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Actually, that was Thomas Edison, not Henry Ford. His idea was a system of re-useable steel forms, like this.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Some of the technologies are:
The styrofoam forms have the advantages of also being their own (very high R-value) insulation. You get the further advantages of a single monolithic pour for the who building. The walls have to be vertical, but that is something that the magic 80% of people would want anyway.
Gunnite and shotcrete can be used for the curved ceilings and hobbit-hole style walls if that's what you want.
So my gut feeling is that it's a really cool hack, but the alternatives will probably be cheaper quite a while to come. Also, a big part of real construction is reconciling the architect's drawing with reality. Things change on a job. The site isn't exactly what needs to be, even with good site prep. There are change orders. Or the concrete pumping company has decided to strengthen its bottom line by selling you product that has too much water. Or things aren't quite working right and have to be corrected on the fly.
Turning the robot on and letting it go probably works better in the lab than on the job site.
The man who never alters his opinion is like the stagnant water and breeds Reptiles of the Mind -- William Blake
However, while the slash summary mentions concrete, a quick survey of the CC site did not mention it, rather it mentioned metals, polystyrene, and polyester (Disco Stu loves his new polyester house.)
Somewhere in my stack of architecture design articles is a paper from the 1960's that describes an automated extrusion process to build homes and other structures. The idea involved a robotic arm controling an extrusion device that assembled layers to produce walls, floors etc.
One immediate application was the construction of very large insulated dome lids for sewage treatment plants.
If anyone is interested in the details I will try and find the original article, scan and post it here.
"Two roads diverged in a wood, you took the one less travelled and it sucked. Now you want to go back in time"
I hope they haven't tried patenting this. I'm pretty sure that there's some prior art dealing with shitting bricks. In fact, I'd preemptively like to call this machine "The Brick-Shitter" in honour of the manner in which it extrudes cement.
With all due respect, though, this machine seriously does look like it could become an interesting tool for building developers. It's like a Rapid Prototyping machine on a grand scale. If it were made faster and more portable, it could be useable on large-scale structures. How feasable would it be to extrude a skyscraper?