The house that the robot built

The construction of new buildings is a laborious and uneconomical form of human activity. A large-scale UN study showed that the construction sector accounts for nearly 40% of global energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The Swiss Higher Technical School of Zurich (ETH Zürich) in collaboration with more than 30 experts from the construction industry for 4 years developed a new construction concept that can solve this problem.

The result of their activities was a three-story building DFAB House (stands for Digital Fabrication and Living - "digital manufacturing and living"), which became the first residential building, fully manufactured using digital technology. That is, with the help of three-dimensional modeling, robots and a 3D printer. The building has an area of ​​220 sq.m. demanded 60% less cement and meets stringent Swiss safety standards in construction. Read more about the house, technologies used and similar projects in the next article from the Cloud4Y provider.

DFAB House was built on the upper platform of the NEST complex ("Nest") in Dubendorf, Switzerland. More precisely, this is not just a complex, it is a full-fledged research laboratory, which consists of a central core with attached module houses. The first tenants of DFAB House were employees of research laboratories Empa and Eawag .


Space will be used not only as housing. It will also become a testing ground where new products from the energy and construction industries will be tested. This work is necessary in order not only to achieve increased building construction efficiency, but also to ensure their high stability.

Building Innovation

The construction of DFAB House involved several of its own research team developments.

1. In situ Fabricator. Autonomous building robot station wagon. It is capable of creating building elements using various tools with an error of less than 5 mm, and can operate semi-autonomously in changing conditions: work at the height of standard walls and pass through doorways. It is waterproof and dustproof, powered by mains and battery. Of the shortcomings - too heavy weight (1.5 tons), but work is already underway to facilitate the construction of the robot.
   
   
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2. Mesh Mold. An industrial robot two meters high, on the manipulator of which a nozzle is installed for laying reinforcement rods and welding them. A robot mounted on a caterpillar chassis lays and welds the reinforcement, preparing the basis for strong concrete walls. It automatically collects the frame, after which a solution of concrete is poured inside, which does not spread to the sides due to the dense structure of the frame and the composition of the solution itself. The main advantage of the system can be considered the ability to create arbitrary forms.
   
   
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3. Smart Dynamic Casting. Technology of an automated concrete molding process. Monolithic vertical structures in the literal sense of the word are “grown” with the help of a robotic arm equipped with various forming nozzles. The design can get the desired shape due to the rotational movement of the die.
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4. Smart Slab Technology for creating amazing concrete slabs using printed sand forms.
   
   
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What does it look like

The ground floor of DFAB House is given for a common space. Floor-to-ceiling windows are installed here, supported by 15 specially designed concrete mullions. The central element of the room is the S-shaped wall, which divides the area of ​​the first floor, creating open and hidden spaces from the eyes. A thin concrete ceiling is poured into a formwork printed on a 3D printer.


The second and third floor - living quarters. Going upstairs, visitors seem to find themselves in a modern alpine chalet. Four robot-created rooms are designed to create a sense of harmony and home warmth. They turned out to be bright and quite spacious. These floors hold wooden frames, the layout of which was modeled on a computer. Two construction robots participated in the installation. Digital design, according to engineers, allowed to optimize and save a significant amount of material.


The house turned out modern and in terms of technical equipment. In it, at the command of the blinds rise and water begins to boil in the kettle, a multi-stage security and lighting control system is functioning. DigitalSTROM equipment is responsible for the operation of a smart home.

Technology is not only responsible for comfort, but also helps control energy consumption. Solar cells on the roof provide energy (about 1.5 times more than necessary for house maintenance), and the control system controls its consumption and smooths out peak loads. Heat from wastewater is not wasted, but is transferred further through heat exchangers installed in shower trays. Unused hot water is returned through the pipes back to the boiler, which not only saves energy and water, but also prevents the growth of bacteria in the pipes.

The miscalculation of the project using local or cloud power, the creation of the necessary templates for robots is quite fast. So the architectural potential of digital technology is huge, but almost never used on construction sites, complains the ETH team. Experimental projects like DFAB should accelerate the transition from theory to practice, says ETH Zürich professor Matthias Kohler. And in order to popularize this idea, the project team published its open source data sets and organized a traveling exhibition entitled “How to Build a House: Architectural Studies in the Digital Age”.

Not dfab single

DFAB House is not the first construction project using digital technology. In 2014, the Chinese company WinSun demonstrated the architectural potential of 3D printing by releasing 10 single-story houses in one day. A year later, the Shanghai company also printed a neoclassical apartment building and mansion, but these projects remain under development.

Matthias Kohler explains that his team did not have a goal to break construction speed records. “Of course, we are interested in achieving a breakthrough in the speed and economy of construction, but we tried to adhere to the idea of ​​quality in the first place,” he says. “You can do something really, really fast, but that doesn't mean it's really sustainable.”

Indeed, so far no one is particularly chasing speed. So, in the Netherlands (excuse me, the Netherlands), robots printed a full-fledged steel bridge - it took four cars six months of continuous operation. The result is a one-piece design, which is now tested for strength and placed over one of the channels in case of successful tests.



By the way, Russia also supports the trend towards digital construction. In 2017, the first residential building in Europe and the CIS, built using 3D building printing technology, was presented in Yaroslavl. The house with an area of ​​298.5 square meters belongs to the owner of AMT-SPETSAVIA, and is a demonstration of his confidence in the prospects of the technology. To print the house, the construction printer S-6044 was used - a portal-type model with a working field of 3.5 x 3.6 x 1 m. The printer prints with standard M-300 sand concrete, that is, with what is available almost everywhere. Printing is done in layers of 10 mm high and 30 to 50 mm wide. Wall printing speed up to 15 sq.m / hour. About the company already wrote on Habré, so we will not repeat.


In general, the idea of ​​digital construction seems very interesting. Unlimited decorative possibilities, speeding up and simplifying the process of erecting buildings and structures, reducing the amount of consumed resources - it is difficult to refuse such “buns”. Any doubts? You can discuss.

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