If you’ve ever wandered a construction site, you might have seen arcane markings on the floor. Those can become walls and doors, depending on what the architect had in mind. And now, HP’s new SitePrint autonomous robot can scribble them on the ground so humans don’t have to.
The HP SitePrint is a small robot about the size of a vacuum cleaner. It’s designed to mark out sections of a building’s floor plan, based on an actual plan and with the assistance of an app. Obviously.
SitePrint it out
Normally, this is work that human beings would do. But people are expensive and tend to make mistakes. Machines only make the mistakes humans specifically tell them to make. The SitePrint takes over from humans, using a connected tablet and some cloud-based skills, it makes like a Roomba on the construction site.
Only, instead of cleaning up the mess on the floor, it’s leaving one. This mess is supposed to act as a guideline for where various building elements are supposed to go. You don’t want stairs that go nowhere unless you’re Sarah Winchester. Then, it’s up to humans to correctly interpret these markings and build on them correctly.
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HP’s little creation will supposedly speed up the marking operation considerably, improving the speed at which your contractors don’t show up the following day. SitePrint marks up multiple surfaces, including concrete and plywood, and operates for up to four hours on a charge. It ships with a second battery, so you can have it work all day.
Just don’t expect to see it in South Africa any time soon. HP will launch the SitePrint in the States first, as part of a limited program. A larger release is planned for 2023. Hopefully, by then, they will have worked out what to do if a burly contractor accidentally boots it across the site and underneath a Caterpillar. It’ll happen. Mark our words.