HP SitePrint, a new robot that prints construction site layouts with pinpoint accuracy, laid out 2,400 square feet of walls in 45 minutes on a recent pilot project with Skanska, the company reports.
It’s a task that Michael Hill, regional director for Siteline 360, says would have taken a layout technician seven hours to complete. (Check out a video from the project below.)
Designed to improve productivity of the site layout process, the HP SitePrint suite of technologies consists of:
- A rugged and autonomous robotic device designed for the rigors of a construction site
- Cloud tools to submit and prepare jobs to be printed, manage the fleet and track usage
- A touchscreen tablet for remote control and configuration
- A portfolio of inks for different surfaces, environmental conditions and durability requirements
The robot operates autonomously, avoiding obstacles along the way, as it prints lines and complex objects on the construction surface. Text printing capabilities bring additional data from the digital model to the construction site, improving communication between construction professionals, HP says.
HP SitePrint navigates the jobsite by linking to a Robotic Total Station. The robot currently integrates with the Leica TS16 and Leica iCON iCR80 Robotic Total Stations. HP notes that an integration with the Topcon Layout Navigator and GT Robotic Total Stations, as well as other solutions, will be available soon.
To date, more than 80 pilot projects have been completed across multiple environments – including residential, parking, airport and hospital projects.
“Technology adoption and increased digitization can help construction firms realize productivity gains,” said Daniel Martínez, vice president and general manager of HP Large Format Printing. “With HP SitePrint, we’re making it faster and easier than ever for construction professionals to bring an idea to life on site, while also providing layout accuracy and reducing costs derived from reworks.”
“The existing manual layout process can be slow and labor intensive. Despite being done by specialists, there is always the risk of human error, which can result in costly reworks,” said Albert Zulps, director of emerging technology at Skanska.
“Layout experts are a scarce resource who add a lot of value in terms of planning and strategy, but often end up dedicating most of their time to manual execution. HP SitePrint lets us do more with less, helping reduce schedules thanks to a much faster layout process, and allowing senior operators to focus on other critical activities like quality control.”
HP SitePrint will be available to Early Access Program customers in North America starting this month. The final product and wider commercial launch are planned for 2023.