AI and robotic arms flex new tech muscles to boost lagging home construction in Canada

Ramtin Attar is standing inside an unremarkable warehouse, in an ordinary-looking industrial park near Edmonton's airport, looking at some robots he believes could be revolutionary for 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 him, a set of four robotic arms, like those found in auto plants, are assembling the walls, floors and roofs of houses.

Using artificial intelligence (AI), the arms are reading blueprints and, in a sense, thinking for themselves about what cuts to make, what pieces to nail together and where holes need to be drilled for wires and plumbing.

"So they can sort of on the fly decide what is the tool I need to use, what is the sequence of tasks I need to do," Attar said.

It's a pretty radical concept for an industry that experts say needs a serious upgrade in order to confront a shortage of skilled labour and a dire need for new housing during an affordability crisis in Canada.

"There's a big disparity between the construction industry and the other industries leveraging AI and robotics," said Daeho Kim, who researches robotic construction as an assistant professor in civil engineering at the University of Toronto.

While the industry has new high-tech building materials and can put up a fancy smart home, many parts of construction — not just detailed finish work — still involve old-fashioned manual labour.

According to a recent report from consulting giant McKinsey & Company, the global $12-trillion architecture, engineering and construction business has been "among the slowest to digitize and innovate."

Canada's industry has been a "laggard," Attar said, adding that the country needs "a massive productivity increase" in order to hit homebuilding targets set by the federal and provincial governments.

He's talking about the gap between the 3.87 million new homes needed by 2031 and how many are being built every year in Canada.

It's a complicated problem tied to housing policy, multiple levels of government regulation, infrastructure costs and a shortage of construction workers forecast to continue for years.

But Attar said he believes technology can significantly reduce how long the construction of houses, apartments and condos takes.

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