The Future Is Now: 3 Futuristic Construction Tech That Is Being Used Today

The construction industry is one of the most significant industrial sectors globally. It accounts for all the buildings, bridges, and highways constructed all around the world. Historically, it has been an industry that uses a great deal of capital and physical labor. The project implementation time is typically longer.

This often raised the issue of productivity in the construction sector. The experience shows that the construction industry has been extremely slow in adopting new technologies and processes to increase productivity, shorten project implementation time, replace manual labor with mechanical substitutes, and increase profitability for the investors.

But things have changed quickly over the past few decades, and technology is playing a significant role in how the construction industry has been running its affairs so far. More highways are being constructed in a shorter period of time.

Similarly, high-rises are being commissioned within a matter of a few weeks. Smart speed bumps are incentivizing responsible for driving by popping up only for over-speeding vehicles.

In this post, we are going to examine three futuristic technologies that are being part of the construction industry today.

1. 3D Printed Homes

3D printing is revolutionary in scope. It’s producing vital human organs to substitute damaged and dysfunctional human organs. In the construction sector, 3D printing technology helps the industry in many ways, from CAD to modeling and prototyping.

But its most revolutionary use in the construction sector is of 3D printing of homes and some of its vital structures.

3D printing is an additive manufacturing process that can build a home one layer simultaneously, much the same way a printer prints one pixel at a time. It uses the concrete mixture in the same way a printer uses ink. What is significant that it eliminates the role of construction workers in the making of homes.

3D printed homes can solve the housing problems in challenging and hostile terrains where traditional construction methods can be difficult and costly.

2. Smart Highways

The technological solutions available today have made some of the highways extremely smart. For example, with the internet of things (IoT) being widely used in the management of highways, driving has become a much pleasant and safer experience.

Some of the best highways in the world have sensors installed all along to feed real-time data to the control room for automated responses. For example, some of the smart cities in the world have installed smart speed bumps.

These speed-breakers pop up when they detect an over-speeding vehicle through the sensors installed along the road. This means those who are driving within the maximum permissible speed don’t have to face the speed bumps.

3. Self-Healing Concrete

Among the most amazing of technological solutions at play in the construction industry today, self-healing concrete is perhaps the most innovative one. Self-healing concrete is obtained by mixing certain types of bacteria with the concrete at the construction stage.

When cracks develop in construction, whether it is a building or highways or a tunnel, the bacteria get activated, multiply their number, and fill up the crack. Certain bacteria can do the job more efficiently than the concreted itself.

This promising technology can save billions of dollars that’s spent on the repair and maintenance of built-up structures all around the world. They can add more years to these structures at virtually no cost at all.

All concrete structures are porous, and they become loose and weak when they are exposed to water. But with self-healing concrete, when the water gets into the concrete through the cracks, the bacteria that were mixed in the concrete get activated. They excrete calcite that solidifies and fills the cracks.

Final Thoughts   

Looking at the size of the industry and the money involved, the construction sector has great potentials for the adoption of futuristic technologies. We are already watching some of them changing the construction industry while more are in the pipelines. Despite the adoption of some of the cutting-edge technologies, the construction industry still has a lot to catch up with.

From smart homes to smart highways, many new-age technologies are under implementation. They promise to completely transform the practice and processes in the construction industry. The use of drones and robotics has already become very popular in the sector. Surely, more are on the way!