Construction

The Exchange tower in Detroit is nearly finished, a 207-ft-tall proof-of-concept for an advanced modular construction technique. Its floors were each pre-built on the ground, then hoisted up on central spines and installed from the top down.

These little-known machines have to rank as some of the greatest sandpit toys in history. Walking spider excavators offer an extraordinary range of capabilities through their articulating, extending legs, stabilizers, tilting wheels, and buckets.

HP has put forward a small robot it says can dramatically speed up construction work, by autonomously printing guidelines straight from the blueprints onto the floor. Rugged, roadworthy and extremely accurate, Siteprint is a super-quick layout tool.

Although discarded printer cartridges may be low on toner, they still do contain some toner which can't simply be reused in its present form. Instead, Canon has started recycling it into a pelletized asphalt colorant and binding agent.

Australian researchers have analyzed the structural properties of walls made from end-of-life car tires packed with dirt, giving engineers some figures to work with and making a well-known upcycling technique available to the construction industry.

Construction is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Flinders University researchers have now developed a polymer made out of industrial waste that can be formed into building bricks that bond together without needing any mortar.

Two years ago Reekon Tools introduced its M1 Caliber tool, which added digital measurement functionality to existing power saws. The company is now offering that same tech in a stand-alone tape measure, called the T1 Tomahawk.

If you're working on a construction project which is indoors or in a sound-sensitive area, using noisy, exhaust-belching machinery isn't the best idea. That's one of the reasons Doosan Bobcat developed the T7X all-electric compact track loader.

Concrete is the most widely used building material in the world, but it comes at a huge environmental cost. Engineers in Japan have developed a new technique to make concrete by recycling waste concrete and combining it with captured carbon dioxide.

Austrian startup Printstones has been developing robotic 3D-printing robots since 2017, and has just pulled back the curtain on its latest prototype, a mobile multi-tasking construction bot called the Baubot.

Unfortunately concrete production is a major source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Now engineers at Purdue University have developed a new cement recipe that can absorb CO2 twice as fast as usual, hopefully turning it into a useful carbon sink.

Scientists at RMIT University are continually coming up with ways to work recovered waste items into high-performing road materials. The latest is made with help from shredded face masks and they claim it offers some unique engineering advantages.