A "contour crafting" machine that will use robotics and be able to build a house in less than a day, at 20% of the cost of traditional building methods, is slated for its first trial run by the end of this year at the University of Southern California. Applications include low-cost housing, emergency housing in areas hit by natural disaster, emergency military housing, and eventually lunar housing. The following is from The New York Times (March 11, 2004):
"Our goal is to completely construct a one-story 2,000-square-foot home on site in one day, without using human hands," said Dr. Khoshnevis, the lead scientist on the project, a joint effort by the university's engineering school and its Information Sciences Institute. With a hoped-for budget of about $5 million, it has been financed so far mainly by the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.
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