Ramtin Attar stands inside an unremarkable warehouse in an ordinary-looking industrial park near Edmonton’s airport, looking at some robots he thinks could revolutionize the construction business.

Attar is the CEO and co-founder of Promise Robotics – part of a small group of Canadian companies and researchers working on technology to help homebuilders catch up with innovation in other industries.

In front of it, a set of four robotic arms, like those found in auto plants, are assembling the walls, floors and roofs of homes.

Using artificial intelligence (AI), the arm is reading blueprints and, in a sense, figuring out for itself which cuts to make, which pieces to nail together and where to drill holes for wires and plumbing. need of

“So they can decide on the fly what tool I need to use, what tasks I need to do,” Attar said.

It’s a pretty basic concept for an industry that experts say needs a serious upgrade to combat a shortage of skilled workers and a desperate need for new housing amid Canada’s affordability crisis. .

“There’s a big disparity between the construction industry and other industries that benefit from AI and robotics,” said Daeho Kim, who researches robotic construction as an assistant professor in civil engineering at the University of Toronto.

Playing catch up.

While the industry has new high-tech building materials and can create a stunning smart home, many parts of construction—not just the detailed finishing work—still involve old-fashioned manual labor.

According to one A recent report by consulting giant McKinsey & CoThe global $12-trillion architecture, engineering and construction business is “among the slowest to digitize and innovate.”

Attar said Canada’s industry is a “laggard,” adding that the country needs a “massive productivity boost” to meet homebuilding targets set by the federal and provincial governments.

He is talking about the difference between. 3.87 million new homes are needed by 2031. And how many are there? Being built every year In Canada

It is a complex issue that involves housing policy, multiple levels of government regulation, infrastructure costs and Shortage of construction workers Forecast to last for years.

But Attar said he believes the technology can significantly reduce how long it takes to build houses, apartments and condos.

How robotic arms work and think.

Attar said his company is developing AI for construction to master some of the “physical tasks that were previously really only the domain of a human.”

Instead of building single-function robots and pre-programming them to perform highly specific tasks, Promise Robotics purchased “off-the-shelf” robotic arms. Started programming my AI on construction skills. And trained weapons to make parts of houses.

Since launching in 2019 and raising $25 millionAttar said the company has built a “core brain” that can scan building plans and make decisions about the fastest way to build parts of a house or multi-unit houses.

Able to accommodate and create many different types of walls, floors, and ceilings, the arms are different from the many large machines in large factories that build prefabricated homes.

While Attar is a tech guy who spent many years working at Autodesk – which makes software for industries like engineering, construction and manufacturing. Raza Nasri, co-founder of his companyhas decades of construction experience and started Edmonton-based ACQBuilt, one of Canada’s largest prefab home building companies.

Unlike ACQBuilt’s multi-million dollar factory, the Promise Robotics system is highly portable and can be set up anywhere in warehouse-type spaces for little money. Attar said it is attracting a lot of interest from homebuilders.

Number crunching to curious builders

Once complete, the walls, floors, and roof are shipped to the building site, where workers use a crane to assemble the house, along with windows, doors, and stairs, in about a day.

The company says it can reduce the total time it takes to build a house to about five months. Which is about half of the normal length.According to government data.

Attar said the company already has one builder as a client in Edmonton, and more than 20 others from across Canada visited Promise Robotics in 2024, interested in the possibility of their development closer to robotic arms. By setting up a temporary facility together, their production can be doubled.

Canadian Home Builders Association CEO Kevin Lee said most construction companies are too short to spend money developing their own technology, but “robotics, if they can be done in a cost-effective way, It’s going to get very interesting.”

Moving robotic arms to the building site

While Promise Robotics’ AI-powered arms operate in a factory-like setting, another company has developed a robotic arm that can operate on site.

Toronto-based Horizon Legacy describes its robotic arm Val 2.0 as a portable 3D printer that pours a special concrete mix to create the walls of a house.

“We don’t have enough people to build all the things we need to build,” said Nhung Nguyen, the company’s CEO, when talking about its projects and the bigger picture in Canada.

The company spent three years and a few million dollars developing Val 2.0, which recently launched in Gananoque, Ont., a small town three hours east of Toronto. I completed the masonry work for a 26-unit housing project.

Nguyen said his walls provide better insulation and his five-person crew is half the size of a regular cement crew on a housing job.

Mounted on a trailer, the arm is controlled not by AI but by a human with a joystick.

Nguyen said the arm takes the heavy lifting and dirty work out of that part of construction, which she hopes will attract new workers to the field.

He said that we want to bring the youth back to construction. “We want to raise the standards in construction, and we’re going to use technology as a tool to do that.”

Both Horizon Legacy and Promise Robotics say that while robots will help ease construction labor shortages, there are plenty of opportunities for workers to continue in roles that require more skills than robots offer. takes place, and to obtain “advanced skills” for jobs leading or managing robotic equipment. .

Other developments and robots are to come.

Arms aren’t the only way robots are advancing in construction.

at the University of British Columbia Smart Structures LabTony Yang, a professor of civil engineering, is working on transforming traditional cranes, excavators and loaders used in construction today into robots by equipping them with all kinds of sensors and connecting them to computers via wireless signals.

Tests have already been done on site with Bird Construction in Richmond, BC, where cranes and forklifts move heavy materials guided by AI, rather than by workers using remote controls.

The technology is similar to self-driving cars and will be the “next-generation robot that you start seeing on construction sites,” possibly within 10 years, Yang said.

But the Home Builders Association’s Lee said policy and regulatory changes are what’s needed to build more quickly.

Back in Edmonton, Promise Robotics’ Attar said he hopes Canadian companies will “lead a shift on an industrial scale that not only can we benefit from, but we can actually take to the rest of the world.” are.”