maslow, the renownedamerican psychologist, identified the pyramid of human needs, at the base of whichare the two essentials, food and shelter. so shelter is the topicof my presentation tonight. at the dawn of the 21st century, unfortunately thisis the condition of shelter for nearly 1 billion people in our world. these slumsare the breading ground for disease,
crime, illiteracy, and over population. naturally governments are after solutions. they are after finding waysto change the situation. however, what they're facing is a problem of conventional construction, the current construction methodsthat we employ. they are generally slow. they are labor-intensive and inefficient.
if you look around yourself, pretty much everythingis made automatically today. your shoes, your clothes,your home appliances, your car. the only thing we still build by handare these buildings. construction is the most hazardous job. it is more dangerousthan mining and agriculture. in this countryit kills 10,000 people every year, and there areabout 400,000 injuries every year. eventually these translate into costs
to the society and homeowners. construction, the way it's done today,is very wasteful, and generates a lot of emissions. and because of all the different tradesthat are involved in there, and the difficultyof the management process in construction, the process is pretty corruption prone. it is very costly, and is always over budget. so, what we have been focusing on
is finding a solution to this problem. our solution, basically, benefits from advanced technology. i named this process 'contour crafting', and it is essentially a way of streamliningthe process of construction by benefiting from the experiencethat we have gained in the domain of manufacturing. in manufacturing there'sa process called cad/cam.
computer aided design,computer aided manufacturing. a lot of things you seeare designed on computers and without any human interference, are sent to the production machinerythat automatically make those products that you use. so we want to scale up those processes, and bring themto the realm of construction. this, of course, has been the desire of a lot of engineers,and technologists.
there have been problems,there have been difficulties in such a transition. recently, there has been development in the field of fabrication. you probably heardabout 3d printing of 3d objects. so contour craftingis basically scaling up 3d printing to the scale of buildings. what we are hoping to generate are entire neighborhoodsthat are dignified,
at a fraction of the cost, at a fraction of the time, far more safely, and with architectural flexibilitythat would be unprecedented. so the buildings that will be built,of course, will not be as homogenous as these. every building can be very different. they do not have to looklike tract houses, because all you have to changeis a computer program.
the architectural design is basically sent to the machine directly. this animation shows the concept. the material, which is cementitious, initially concrete, is deposited through a nozzle, and the building is built layer by layer. in the process, a lot of things can be done,
including automatic reinforcement, automatic plumbing, automatic electrical network installation. and once the basic structure is done, there could be other automated processes that would do auxiliary operations such as finish work, tiling, and even painting using ink-jet printers,the kind that print billboards. so, in the end,the whole building can be ready
in an unprecedented time. we anticipate an average house, a 2,500 square foot house, can be built in about 20 hours, custom design. the model that you see hereis pretty simplified, because i didn't want to makethe animation difficult for my students. but you can imagine that the walls do not have to necessarily be rectilinear.
they can use any kind of curve, therefore you can really execute very exotic,beautiful architectural features, without incurring additional costs. this clip shows how reinforcement, plumbing,and electrical installation can be done. so rather than using continuous rebars, we can have segments of rebar automatically inserted and assembledinside the building.
so this wall is being reinforced by a two-dimensional mesh of steel. likewise, plumbing elementscould be installed while the building is being erected. as you know,currently every one of these activities involve their own trade. so for electrical network installations you can havethese polymeric blocks with conductors that carry electricity,
and communication signals. this is one of the machinesthat we've developed. as you see, the nozzle is secretingpretty dense concrete. this concrete is high performance, and it is mixed with fibers,composite fibers. it gives you pretty good strength. this particular wall hasa 10,000-psi strength. the average concrete structuresthat you see
typically are about 3,000 psi,pounds per square inch. this wall is hollow, therefore it does not useas much material, it's lighter, and has good heat [insulation]characteristics. this is a typical machine that will be used for this technology. this particular machine,that you can see here, can replace existing mobile homes, referred to as tornado magnets.
you can have different kindsof configuration for these robots. this is for a singledetached residential building. you can have a multi nozzle machine, that will be good for large buildings. these nozzles work concurrently, or you can have the machineclimb the building. look at this old structure. this is about 200 years old. it's a beautiful adobe structurebuilt in one of the most
earthquake prone regions of iran,in the city of kashan. it stands erect still, after allthe experiences that it has had of shaking because of the wonderful geometriesthat are used in here. rectilinear wallsare the worst kind of structures, as far as strength is concerned. the inside of these buildingscan be pretty, homey, organic, and the patterns that are used for building these are pretty ingenious. those people are no longer accessible
in a lot of places in the world, and if they are,they'll be very expensive. however, with robotic systemwe can mimic those patterns and buildthose beautiful structures automatically. and we can even use the in-situ material to build structures without support beams. so our current projectthat is supported by nasa, aims at using the technologyto build lunar structures, such as landing pads, roads,
hangers for the landers, support walls, radiation protection walls. so these are someof the structures that are built, this could be a lunar fuel vessel. what we expect to offerwith this technology, is significant reduction in the cost by reducing the cost of financing,the cost of materials, and of course,significantly reducing the cost of labor. compared to 'emergency','prefab manufactured',
'prefab modular',and 'conventional construction', 'contour crafting' will offerthe highest architectural flexibility with a cost that is only higher than 'emergency' building constructiontoday. and as far as construction speedis concerned, nothing will beat contour crafting. co2 emission is a small fractionof the current emission, and the energy usageby the technology is also very low. so therefore, the technology
is extremely environmentally friendly. contour craftingas a disruptive technology will have a number of impacts,including economic impacts, employment impacts, social impacts, regulatory, environmental, and architectural impacts. with respect to employment impact, i should just make a remark that there is a lot of concern about
people being put out of construction jobs. the reality is that a lot of new jobscan be created in this sector as well. currently women and the elderly do not have much opportunityto work in the construction industry. with new technologieslike contour crafting, those groups of peoplecan also be employed in more creative activitiesof construction. at the beginning of the previous century,around 1900,
62% of americans were farmers. today less than 1.5% of them are involved. the world did not come to an end as a result of utilizationof agricultural technologies. and the same will be truein the case of construction. there will always be better economies resulted from advancement,
3d printing companies in california,and utilization of technologies that just makes sense.
thank you. (applause)
