Nov 27, 2023 12:08:00

Autonomous excavator successfully builds a stone wall 6 meters high and 65 meters long

Researchers at

ETH Zurich have developed a method to build 6m-tall dry stone walls using autonomous excavators. This can be used as a foundation for concrete walls, which will lead to increased resource efficiency.

Autonomous excavator constructs a six-metre-high dry-stone wall | ETH Zurich
https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2023/11/autonomous-excavator-constructs-a-six-metre-high-dry-stone-wall.html

A research team at ETH Zurich has successfully built a dry stone wall 6 meters high and 65 meters long using an autonomous excavator called HEAP. The research involves researchers from ETH Zurich's Gramazio Kohler Research , Robotic Systems Lab , Vision For Robotics , and the chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture.

You can check out how HEAP builds a stone wall in the video below.

Autonomous excavator constructs a six-metre-high dry stone wall - YouTube

A load-bearing wall with a height of 6 meters and a length of 65 meters made using stones and rubble.

This was piled up by HEAP, an autonomous excavator developed by researchers at ETH Zurich.

“Autonomous,” as the name suggests, means the excavator operates completely unmanned.

HEAP scans the surrounding environment with built-in sensors and draws a 3D map of the construction site to locate existing building blocks and stones needed for wall construction.

A glimpse of the sensors installed in HEAP.

Using specially designed tools and

machine vision , HEAP will be able to scan and grab large stones around it. It is also possible to determine the approximate weight and center of gravity of stones and debris.