Robotic printers are already capable of 3D printing small houses. MIT researchers have designed a robotic system that can fabricate the structure of an entire building. It consists of a tracked vehicle that carries a large industrial robotic arm. It can be used to control a conventional construction nozzle.
This free-moving system can construct buildings of any size. In fact, the researchers used a prototype of it to build the structure of a 50-foot-diameter, 12-foot-high dome in less than 14 hours:
the system is intended to be self-sufficient. It is equipped with a scoop that could be used to both prepare the building surface and acquire local materials, such as dirt for a rammed-earth building, for the construction itself. The whole system could be operated electrically, even powered by solar panels.
