This 'BILL-E' Robot Will Revolunize The Construction Industry

Advancement in robotics could revolutionize the way we create everything from mechanics to massive structures like bridges or tunnels. At MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, a team of researchers has figured out a new robot for use in construction.

Named after the famous robot WALL-E, the new robot is also dubbed with a sound-alike name, BILL-E. In fact, this is the shortened form of the Bipedal Isotropic Lattice Locomoting Explorer. The robot has a significant inchworm-like gait due to its design with a small arm and a hinge in the middle. At every arm’s end, there are tools for BILL-E to clamp down on “voxels”, a kind of structure that the team has given that name. Although it may be cute, BILL-E isn’t the breakthrough while its relationship with the voxel structures has been the most important thing.

According to a researcher working on the project, the robot and these structures can’t be separated because the system needs both of them to work properly. Once the voxels allow, BILL-E will navigate 3D space without any need for a complex camera system, sensor or algorithm. To keep track on every position, it’ll simply count all the steps that it made on whatever structure it’s building up. The MIT team has called it a “relative robot” due to the unreplaceable relationship between it and the building blocks, noting that it’ll use them to create structures. In terms of cost, this way makes it not only more budget than specialized robots, but also more capable than robots made with off-the-shelf components.

In addition, the BILL-E robot can add a load of other units for navigating. Alongside, multiple BILL-E units can simultaneously work in everyone’s own way to build a structure together. What’s more, it also has another advantage that is the ability to repair any broken or damaged voxel with a new one.