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The robot digger, called HEAP, constructed the six metre high and 65m long wall as part of a digitally planned and autonomously constructed landscape and park.
The excavator uses sensors to draw a 3D map of the construction site and figure out the location of building blocks and stones that could be used in the wall's construction. Specially designed machine vision approaches enable the excavator to scan and grab large stones and register their approximate weight and centre of gravity.
An algorithm determines the best position for each stone, and the excavator then places the stones in the desired location. The machine is capable of placing 20 to 30 stones in a single consignment – about as many as one delivery could supply.
The feat is the latest in a string of autonomous construction milestones. Many have built on 3D-printing technology, with large nozzles used to extrude material to build houses in a project in Italy, for instance. But this autonomous excavator is unique because it works out how to place existing natural materials in the most logical way.
In a paper published in the journal Science Robotics, the authors said that the technology could enable construction in remote areas, and reduce the amount of carbon used. "The work illustrates the potential of autonomous heavy construction vehicles to build adaptively with highly irregular, abundant, and sustainable materials that require little to no transportation and preprocessing," they wrote.
The team of researchers included Gramazio Kohler Research, the Robotics Systems Lab, Vision for Robotics Lab, and the Chair of Landscape Architecture.
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