ABB Robots and Bricklaying: Trowel to Robot Mason

Masons laid bricks by hand for centuries. Now Monumental and FBR are pushing bricklaying robots, and ETH Zurich's ABB IRB 4600 shows how robots build walls.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/25/20261 min read

Bricklaying barely changed for centuries. A mason spread mortar with a trowel, set each brick to a string line and checked it with a level, and a good one laid a few hundred bricks in a day. It was skilled, heavy work done outdoors in every kind of weather.

Black and white photo of a man in a cap and white jacket laying bricks on a wall
Black and white photo of a man in a cap and white jacket laying bricks on a wall

A bricklayer at work in Finland, 1963. Photo: U. A. Saarinen / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Brickworks mechanized long ago, with machines pressing and firing the bricks and robots stacking them on pallets. The wall itself is still built by hand, though, and in many countries fewer young people are training as masons.

Row of brick kilns in front of an open shed stacked with bricks
Row of brick kilns in front of an open shed stacked with bricks

Brick kilns at a small brick factory in Tuaran, Sabah. Photo: CEphoto, Uwe Aranas / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

This month brought two bricklaying robot stories. Interesting Engineering talked to Monumental, whose robots lay about as many bricks in a shift as one mason and use tricks learned from masons, like turning a chipped brick to hide the damage. In Australia, FBR began raising A$4 million to push its Hadrian bricklaying robot toward commercial use.

Brick and flint wall panel being built inside metal scaffolding on a house site
Brick and flint wall panel being built inside metal scaffolding on a house site

A brick and flint house going up behind scaffolding in Northrepps, England, 2022. Photo: Kolforn / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB robots have been part of this research for years. At ETH Zurich, Gramazio Kohler Research and its partners built the In situ Fabricator, an ABB IRB 4600 arm with a 2.55 m reach mounted on a tracked base, and used it to stack a curving brick wall in a lab set up like a building site.

Industrial robot arm on a tracked base next to a tall curved mesh wall under a scaffold roof
Industrial robot arm on a tracked base next to a tall curved mesh wall under a scaffold roof

ETH Zurich's In situ Fabricator, an ABB IRB 4600 on a tracked base, building a curved wall. Photo: Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In a brick plant, heavy ABB palletizers such as the IRB 660 can stack finished bricks and blocks for shipping. ABB's RobotStudio lets engineers turn a wall design into a robot program and test it on screen before a single brick moves.

Close up of an ABB IRB 4600 robot arm with the ABB logo in a factory
Close up of an ABB IRB 4600 robot arm with the ABB logo in a factory

An ABB IRB 4600, the same robot family used in ETH's In situ Fabricator. Photo: ABB

Corners, arches and repairs to old walls will stay with masons for a long time. I expect robots to lay the long straight runs while the mason checks, cuts and finishes. Some day a small robot might even build a garden wall at home over a weekend.

Engineer at a laptop showing a 3D model with an ABB robot cell in the background
Engineer at a laptop showing a 3D model with an ABB robot cell in the background

An engineer plans a robot job in ABB RobotStudio before the robot runs it. Photo: ABB

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