Company profile: Monumental
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Telegraph
39 minutes ago
- Telegraph
Robot bricklayers that can work round the clock coming to Britain
Robot bricklayers are set to be trialled on British construction sites amid warnings of a major labour shortage in the house building industry. The machines, developed by Dutch company Monumental, use two mechanical arms that dispense mortar and lay bricks at a similar pace to a human. That is equivalent to roughly 500 bricks per robot in a typical eight-hour shift, but they can be programmed to work around the clock if required – albeit under human supervision. It represents one potential solution to help ease a chronic shortage of brickies in Britain's construction industry, with experts warning that at least 25,000 more are needed to meet the Government's house-building plans. In the Netherlands, Monumental's machines have already built facades for dozens of houses as well as canal-supporting walls in housing developments. They can construct straight-lined brick walls and some cornering. Now, Monumental is preparing to trial the machines in the UK for the first time with London bricklaying contractor Galostar, a company that has previously worked on residential projects as well as bigger schemes such as the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, east London, and the capital's Sadler's Wells Theatre. Tony Chapman, Galostar's managing director, said the tests were expected to begin next month. They will initially focus on whether the robots can be successfully adapted to British standards and can handle being deployed on scaffolding. He said: 'We don't think they [the machines] will ever completely replace brickies, but they can certainly help with the skills shortages we are dealing with. 'From our point of view it also helps because the robots don't need breaks, they don't take time off, and so if you have several of them you will know exactly what your output is going to be.' One person can supervise two of the machines at once but the supervisor does not need to be a qualified bricklayer, meaning it should be easier to keep construction sites manned, said Salar al Khafaji, Monumental's co-founder. He said: 'You just contract us to do work, and we will come with our machines to do the work, instead of a bunch of humans. 'Your labour pool will now be much bigger, and you can work multiple shifts.' He expects to charge about the same as the going rate for a human brickie, or around £1 per brick. Monumental says the robots can also be programmed to lay different brick configurations and patterns. It potentially opens the door for a return to the more elaborate styles of brickwork beloved by Victorian and Edwardian builders that are considered too labour-intensive by large-volume housebuilders today. 'Today, if you want to ask for a very nice, patterned facade with two brick colours, you'll get an outrageously expensive quote, because it's quite hard and it will slow the masons down,' Mr al Khafaji added. 'But this is exactly the kind of thing that robots excel at – you just enter it once, and our system allows you to have a mixed supply of coloured bricks and different types of bricks. 'And we won't charge you more, because it's not more expensive. So you'll be able to bring some of those things back into the industry. 'We're doing a canal wall in Amsterdam soon with really elaborate patterns – bricks sticking out, that sort of thing. It's kind of crazy, I'm very excited about it.' Mr al Khafaji is a former executive at Palantir, the US defence tech giant co-founded by PayPal billionaire and Donald Trump supporter Peter Thiel. He said he wanted to apply his expertise in software and machine learning to help solve problems in the construction industry, which has long been viewed by economists as a laggard. He co-founded Monumental in 2021 with Sebastiaan Visser. The pair raised $25m (£18.6m) from investors last year. They have long been eyeing the UK – where roughly five times as many bricks are laid per year than in the Netherlands – because of the huge national shortage of bricklayers. A recent report by the Home Builders Federation and the Construction Industry Training Board estimated that 25,000 more brickies are needed to meet the Government's target to build 1.5m homes before the next election.
Economist
17 hours ago
- Economist
Why armies are using laser weapons to zap things out of the sky
The Economist explains | Beam them down Your browser does not support this video. ARMIES HAVE dreamt of firing laser weapons for a long time. A lab funded by America's Defence Department demonstrated one in 1960. But decades of development failed to produce a practical weapon, and the ambition waned. Now it is back. Last year America reportedly used a high-energy laser (HEL) to down drones aimed at its forces in the Middle East. Israel and Russia have both recently used HELs to foil drone attacks. Ukraine may soon do the same. Why are laser weapons suddenly useful? And what role could they play in future wars? The Martians had a heat ray that could destroy the Royal Navy's battleships, but that was in 'The War of the Worlds', a 19th-century work of science fiction. HELs are not high-energy enough for that. To seriously damage a warship or tank would require megawatts of power–a noticeable proportion of the output of a conventional power plant. HELs produce kilowatts, ie, thousandths of a megawatt. Even aircraft can survive bombardment by HELs. For a while missiles looked like potential prey. They have thin skins and are packed with fuel and explosives. Merely damaging the shell of a supersonic missile can create drag, causing it to tumble out of control. And, no matter how fast the missile, laser beams, which travel at the speed of light, can catch up to it. President John F. Kennedy gave a laser-missile-defence project the highest national-security priority after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. But missiles turned out to be difficult targets. They're not as fast as lasers, yet they are still hard to intercept. In 1973 a laser downed an aerial target at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, but it was something a little slower than a missile, perhaps a small radio-controlled aircraft. The advent of the small drone as a weapon in the 2010s has given lasers a target they can handle. The Russian and Ukrainian armed forces have launched attack drones, as have the Houthi militia in Yemen. They are becoming ubiquitous in war. Conventional air defences can shoot them down, but many of the missiles these systems fire cost millions of dollars and are in short supply. Lasers, on the other hand, cost just a few dollars per shot and their ammunition is limited only by their power supply. Advocates say they're the ideal drone killers. Your browser does not support this video. America fielded a laser system in the Persian Gulf in as early as 2014, to destroy small boats and other 'asymmetric threats', but did not use it. It probably first fired one in battle last year. A 20-kilowatt LOCUST system, the size of a small garden shed and weighing some 1,500kg, reportedly downed drones launched at a military base in the Middle East, probably by an Iran-backed militia. This year Israel released video of its lasers shooting down drones fired by Hizbullah, a Lebanon-based militia. The Israel Defence Forces claim that they have taken out 'dozens' of drones. Analysts believe that Israel is using the Keren Or (Lite Beam) system made by Rafael, an Israeli firm. It's a ten-kilowatt little brother to the 50-kilowatt Iron Beam system, which is being developed to supplement the conventional Iron Dome anti-missile system. Meanwhile, Russia has released a video purporting to show an HEL engaging a Ukrainian drone. The weapon looks identical to a Chinese-made Shen Nung, with an output of more than 30 kilowatts. Ukraine has also released footage of its 50-kilowatt Trident laser destroying drones in tests. Its commanders are eager to field Trident to defend against nightly waves of Iranian-designed Shahed drones fired from Russia. Though trendy, HELs have drawbacks. Even though one blast is cheap, installing a system is not. The British Royal Navy's Dragonfire HELs will cost £100m ($135m) apiece. Today's lasers have relatively short ranges (of up to a few miles) and can be hampered by smoke, dust, haze or fog. In theory they can be carried around by planes or Jeeps, but get the power they need more easily from ships or on the ground. Lasers also have competition in the form of old-fashioned anti-aircraft guns, which are relatively cheap and can take on lots of targets. Attack drones are here to stay. The question is whether beams or bullets will blast them.
Economist
2 days ago
- Economist
Chip lords: the world's most important company
|1 min read Around 90% of the world's leading chips are made by TSMC, and most of them in Taiwan. Without those chips, the most critical advancements in AI—or even in the latest iPhone—would not have been possible. So how did one company become so dominant? And should the world be so dependent on chips made in a country on a geopolitical faultline between China and America? Hosts: Ethan Wu and Mike Bird. Guests: The Economist 's Shailesh Chitnis; Chris Miller, author of 'Chip War'; Asianometry founder Jon Yu; and Wendell Huang, CFO of TSMC.
