A new method of house construction is in the final stages of development and you could well be seeing signs stating “Beware Contour Crafting in progress” sometime soon.

Boffins at the University of South California have developed a robotic gantry that builds up walls to almost any shape and specification without any manual labour, plans are input into a computer and the concrete laying machine goes about its duty, able to finish an entire house within a day without a single tea break.

Behrokh Khoshnevis is the brainchild behind this building machine after looking into methods of rapid construction as a way to reconstruct areas devestated by natural disasters such as earthquakes which have plagued his native Iran.

Not only a labour saver of note but the machine is environmentally sound too as reports claim up to seven tonnes of waste are produced by convential house building and the machine would also negate the need for heavy vehicle usage too.

Khoshnevis has also had interest from NASA in his machine as a potential builder of a lunar habitat.



