The Eurecat technology centre has presented at Rebuild, the flagship event for the construction industry, technological solutions in areas such as decarbonisation and CO2 capture, robotisation and waste recovery to unlock sustainability, digitalisation and automation in the sector.
“The innovations are closely aligned with the big challenges and opportunities in the construction industry which include stepping up the energy performance of buildings, automating production processes, creating new materials and construction solutions and defossilising construction in the industry by tapping technologies for capturing and using CO2,” said Jose Sevillano, head of Eurecat’s Construction Sector Business Unit.
The technology centre has displayed an innovation it has developed in partnership with Jansa to automate the assembly of metal parts in beams by harnessing techniques which make it possible to plan the robot’s path in real time using 3D scanning data.
Also in robotics and as part of the Built2spec project, tests have been conducted on using drones to get a complete 3D reconstruction of the construction site with the help of a conventional camera and the sensors of an aerial robot to simplify technical inspections of buildings under construction and, as a result of integration with a BIM (Building Information Modelling) system, narrow the gap often found between the design and its final construction.
In sustainability, Eurecat has presented an eco-design initiative to reinforce wooden beams with carbon fibre together with innovation projects for recovering glass waste undertaken with Santos Jorge, and for recovering coffee waste with Biosity to get new materials and applications for the construction industry.
The technology centre’s booth at Rebuild also showcased transparent organic photovoltaic modules printed on flexible plastic and glazing for use in street furniture and building windows, respectively.
Digital twins to test construction systems
The Eurecat technology centre also has a construction laboratory in Amposta to test, monitor and validate façade construction systems in a real-world environment for both opaque and transparent systems drawing on digital twin technology which makes it possible to analyse and compare the performance of the materials in each part of the façade.
