Could Home-Building Robots Help Fix the Housing Crisis? (cnn.com)
- Reference: 0180930844
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/03/08/2344234/could-home-building-robots-help-fix-the-housing-crisis
- Source link: https://www.cnn.com/world/home-building-robots-housing-crisis-auar-spc
> Co-founder Mollie Claypool says the micro-factories will be able to produce the panels quicker, cheaper and more precisely than a timber framing crew, freeing up carpenters to focus on the construction of the building... The micro-factory fits into a shipping container which is sent to the building site along with an operator. Inside the factory, a robotic arm measures, cuts and nails the timber into panels up to 22 feet (6.7 meters) long, keeping gaps for windows and doors, and drilling holes for the wiring and plumbing. The contractor then fits the panels by hand.
>
> One micro-factory can produce the panels for a typical house in about a day — a process which, according to Claypool, would take a normal timber framing crew four weeks — and is able to produce framing for buildings up to seven stories tall... She says their service is 30% cheaper than a standard timber framing crew, and up to 15% cheaper than buying panels from large factories and shipping them to a site... She adds that the precision of the micro-factories means that the panels fit together tightly, reducing the heat loss of the final home, making them more energy efficient.
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> AUAR currently has three micro-factories operating in the US and EU, with five more set to be delivered this year... AUAR has raised £7.7 million ($10.3 million) to date, and is expanding into the US, where a lack of housing and preference for using wood makes it a large potential market.
There's other companies producing wooden or modular housing components, the article points out. But despite the automation, the company's co-founder insists to CNN that "Automation isn't replacing jobs. Automation is filling the gap."
> The UK's Construction Industry Training Board found that the country will need [2]250,000 more workers by 2028 to meet building targets but in 2023, more people left the industry than joined.
[1] https://www.cnn.com/world/home-building-robots-housing-crisis-auar-spc
[2] https://www.citb.co.uk/about-citb/news-events-and-blogs/over-250-000-extra-construction-workers-required-by-2028-to-meet-demand
Re: No (Score:1)
Wrong. They like building low-cost houses, but when land is zoned for 1/2, 3/4, or greater minimum buildable lot size, it doesn't make sense to build an 1,800 sq ft house, the land becomes more than 50% of the price.
Re: (Score:2)
60 years ago, there were builders that would put 1000 sq ft houses on half acre lots. They won't do it anymore. There are some aging duplexes around here on half acre lots that are smaller than your typical McMansion.
I thought the housing crisis was about greed (Score:3)
...of humans, and private equity buying up land.
How are micro-factories going to help with that?
Re: (Score:3)
> ...of humans, and private equity buying up land.
> How are micro-factories going to help with that?
By firing all the laborers through robotics and using AI to fire all the white collar workers not only can real estate prices be driven higher, but none of the filth get their poor little hands on so much as a crumb. Like 5 people can own the world.
Re: (Score:1)
Theoretically, if you *could* automate construction and find some land to build on, the increased supply would make housing investment less attractive to institutions and douchebag landlords.
Re: (Score:2)
That's not how it works. You can't just buy a tract of land. You have to buy the land, jump through hoops to get permits to build, defeat NIMBY lawsuits, get the local municipality to run services, defeat more NIMBY lawsuits, get new permits from a new municipality administration, then finally break ground on construction.
NIMBYs of all stripes throw up roadblocks during the permitting process and will then sue to get an injunction. If you defeat those lawsuits they'll go after the municipalities suing that
Re: (Score:2)
Right, that's why I said theoretically.
Re: (Score:2)
Ironically factory towns would actually be better.
In a factory town, the housing is a recruitment incentive and benefit (that ironically keeps you trapped because the non-factory town alternative is so much more expensive). But at least then the objective is to keep the housing affordable and accessible to employees of the company, and the ecosystem that keeps them happy. Whereas it seems like everywhere else in the US (and in highly desirable places internationally) people have decided that a place to li
Re: I thought the housing crisis was about greed (Score:1)
Really? The military offers "factory housing," is that really a big recruitment incentive for them?
No. Just No. (Score:2)
The housing crisis has little to do with the cost or effort of erecting a new home. It is zoning, permits, objections, inspections, financing, insurance. Red tape.
Re: (Score:1)
= NIMBYism
Housing issues are about LAND. (Score:2)
This systems helps to build more houses. But you can only build more houses if there is a place to build them. It doesn't matter how cheaply and quickly you can build the house if you can't find a reasonable place to build it.
It's not about building a better mousetrap (Score:3)
If you think the housing crisis is caused by not enough wealth, or needing robots because you can't hire enough people who want to do the job, you are grossly misunderstanding the problem.
It ain't the cost of the house (Score:2)
It's the cost of the land the house sits on.
Jimmy Carter robot (Score:1)
He might be able to help out in Iran.
Invest in our snake oil while you can! (Score:2)
If Mormons can build a barn in a day, a house should also be doable.
Enough illegal immigrants that would be willing to help out.
Re: (Score:3)
Now imagine a Beowulf cluster of illegal Mormons.
Re: Invest in our snake oil while you can! (Score:1)
Not Mormons, you mean mennonites, quakers, etc. not Mormons.
A key part of a barn raising is that it is a housing unit, no inspections, no plumbing, no wiring, and very, very few windows, doors, or even walls.
Every year a company builds a small home in a day at a construction industry event - the key is have everything needed on a truck, idling on the street in front of the house, along with each trade represented on-site for the duration of the project.
The delays in home construction is delivery time and su
No. The cost of building already isn't the issue. (Score:2)
The housing crisis, in the US at least but many other places too, only exists because existing home owners hold legal power. It's an incumbency problem.
We have to somehow make housing cheaper, while not reducing anyone's property values.
It's absurd. Until we reconcile that, robots don't matter. People will vote down any effort to put up cheaper housing that actually drives prices down, whether it's built by robots, humans, or trained squirrels has nothing to do with it.
Re: (Score:2)
> People will vote down any effort to put up cheaper housing that actually drives prices down
If the value of my house goes down I would never even know it because I don't borrow against it and I'm not looking to sell it.
So why would I care if it's easier for other people to afford a house too? The people who think that way are not homeowners, they're investors. And they're assholes.
Re: No. The cost of building already isn't the iss (Score:1)
You care because your property taxes will go thru the roof.
If your house is assessed at X, and everyone else in town has a house half as big as yours, but on average they run as many kids thru the school as you do, your taxes go up because the tax rate for less expensive homes needs to me higher to cover the costs of services provided.
Also, the fact that you never plan to sell or borrow against your home makes you a bit of an outlier, most people probably consider buying a bigger house as their family expsn
Re: (Score:2)
> your taxes go up because the tax rate for less expensive homes needs to me higher to cover the costs of services provided.
Services are not higher for less expensive homes. Cost to the homeowner for maintenance might be, but that's on the homeowner. Not the municipality.
Trying to extract funds for schools by targeting people who have less house value per kid with higher rates will get you voted out of office fast.
Re: (Score:2)
See, now you're saying I want my home value to go down and OP is saying I want it to go up. There's not much I can do about it either way so I'll just be happy with the way it is.
no, corporate American doesn't work that way (Score:1)
When they can make components for 30%or 15% less money at 4x faster, that means they sell at the same price and pocket the difference. That's how you pay for the machinery and these inventors run a business. The pitch being "I can get you the same components a month faster! So you, Mr. Contractor will hold the loan a month less. That's how innovation works - never passes reduced costs and the differences go into someone's pocket. Oh, and by the way, now the crew of 10 construction guys (from 1 job site)
We have plenty of people to build houses (Score:3)
The problem is that artificially constraining the supply is beneficial to people who already own houses and to wealthy private equity firm owners and shareholders.
I'm so tired of seeing people trying to come up with technological problems to social issues. You can have all the technology in the world and it doesn't do any good if you aren't allowed to use it to make people's lives better.
Re: We have plenty of people to build houses (Score:1)
How will a robot change zoning laws?
No more than... (Score:2)
No more than robots could save the US auto industry by eliminating workers in competition with the Japanese in the 1980s.
A civil engineering professor in college once said if built homes but used Lego-like elements, less labor, and more homes constructed quickly. Perhaps we should go back to the concrete houses of Thomas Edison.
[1]https://www.atlasobscura.com/p... [atlasobscura.com]
--JoshK.
[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/thomas-edisons-concrete-houses
No (Score:2)
But we have to keep asking because we'll try anything before actually giving humans jobs.
Re: No (Score:1)
Right, because home building is not a labor-intensive industry.
We will NOT LET the cost of housing go down. (Score:1)
There are COUNTLESS technologies and policies that could reduce the price of housing.
The issue is that we won't apply them. Or if we do apply them, we will do something else, to keep the price of homes up.
That's because:
* 65% of US householders are homeowners.
* 58% of homeowners vote. (contrast: 37% of renters vote.)
About 70-75% of people who cast a ballot are homeowners.
And they do NOT want the price of their house to go down.
Now on [1]https://x.com/BoringBiz_/statu... [x.com] you can see Donald Trump declaring to
[1] https://x.com/BoringBiz_/status/2014540092891701680
Re: We will NOT LET the cost of housing go down. (Score:1)
> And they do NOT want the price of their house to go down.
Homeowners do not want to be locked into a high interest rate mortgage when their home price drops below the remaining balance on their mortgage - they can't refinance without covering the lost equity due to the home value dropping.
No (Score:2)
The housing crisis is caused by the billionaire class wanting everybody else to be poor. This is not a tech problem.
Re: No (Score:2)
No, it's neighbors voting in zoning regulations that prevent high-density, multi-unit dwellings being built in their city.
my money in on (Score:2)
Traveling sex bots. She can walk down into your basement and rock your socks off. For a few dollars more she can bring you Cheetos, Pizza, and Mt Dew.
Cheap houses are already here (Score:2)
They're called modular houses. Modern ones don't even look like trailer park trash - they can look almost identical to a stick built home. The only difference is you can go from a plot of empty land to a fully erected house in a week - and most of the time is simply digging out the ground and pouring the foundation. The actual house erection takes about a day and another day to join all the seams together and do all the necessary finishing (hooking up utilities, etc).
Because the modules are built indoors th
Re: Cheap houses are already here (Score:1)
Cheaper construction doesn't lower zoning requirements like 'minimum buildable lot size'
Modern builders have walls for new homes framed in a factory and delivered to the worksite and the house is framed in a couple days by a couple of guys. Stacking modular trailers on top of each other doesn't really solve a problem, it's just a different way to build a home, the price difference isn't that great compared to stick-built in a modern, large-scale community like hovnanian or pulte community.
The answer is...no (Score:2)
This kind of staged demo looks cool but construction in the real world is hard, really hard
I suspect that the problem will be solved in the far future, but today's tech falls short
Rough framing is easy (Score:2)
The expensive parts of homes are those where multiple trades need to work. Rough framing is relatively inexpensive and easy in that regard. If you want to reduce the cost of housing, go with composting toilets, finish materials that are structural, and prefabricated kitchens and bathroom modules that are fully finished.
No, (Score:1)
It's not about making more houses it's controlling what the housing prices are. The industry continues to bump the prices up making everything unobtainable and out of reach anymore. so having a country wide cap on sq/ft pricing and taxing anything above that price would control the increases. and also forcing places that have abnormally high rents to lower them or face taxes on empty units.
Probably not (Score:3)
It's mostly about the terrains and houses being "boomer NFTs", rather than the cost of building new ones.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> It's mostly about the terrains and houses being "boomer NFTs", rather than the cost of building new ones.
Don’t forget blocking all residential density improvements to keep supply low. Also blocking all affordable housing.
Reading the article (Score:2)
[1]https://www.cnn.com/world/home... [cnn.com]
Home-building robots could help fix the housing crisis - Sam Peters - CNN - Mar 6, 2026
- Start the alarm statement to get readers - "Many parts of the world are experiencing a housing crisis "
- No future workers, right? - ""an aging population of builders....there is a need for more construction workers"
Note: CNN's reporter moved the "mention the company being advertised" from the typical paragraph 4 to paragraph 3. Mentioning the "savior company or product" after a "state t
[1] https://www.cnn.com/world/home-building-robots-housing-crisis-auar-spc
Re: Probably not (Score:2)
Add to it that prices increases due to real estate agent fees and the wish to make a profit from a sale.
Re: Probably not (Score:1)
Yeah, no. The big impediment to low-cost home ownership isn't the cost of laborers, it's the zoning regulations that limit density, multi-unit structures, etc.
You can't build a [1]Levittown type community [wikipedia.org] anymore - and something like that is what's likely needed.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown
Re: (Score:3)
This, construction labor costs are only one of the smallest parts of the housing affordability problem. The bulk of the problem is artificially restricted supply (especially of high-density low-cost housing) due to zoning laws.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that it isn't *just* shelter, it's a shelter and also an "NFT" (since it's an investment that's expected and supposed to endlessly appreciate for "reasons"). The resulting problem being that you can't get the shelter without the "NFT" so shelter costs are peak-Bored-Ape stupid even if you just want a shelter.
Re: (Score:2)
Also the social stigma of manufactured homes has the entire industry stuck in the 1800s.
Re: (Score:2)
Manufactured housing loses value as it ages. Frame housing does not.
Re: (Score:2)
> It's mostly about the terrains and houses being "boomer NFTs", rather than the cost of building new ones.
That's different from previous generations how?