HP Announces Self-Building Layout Printing Robot

HP SitePrint prints building diagrams with pinpoint accuracy. | Source: HP

HP announced HP SitePrint, an autonomous robot that accurately prints site plans on the floor. SitePrint will be available to customers in North America from September 2022 through an early access program. The company plans a wider commercial release of the robot in 2023.

SitePrint was designed to automate the site layout process. It includes a lightweight, compact and autonomous robot, cloud tools to submit and prepare jobs to print and manage the fleet, a touch pad for remote control and configuration, and a portfolio of inks for different surfaces, environmental conditions and durability requirements.

The robot can print digital layouts on a variety of surfaces including concrete, tarmac, plywood, pavement, terrazzo, vinyl and epoxy. It can print on rough surfaces and obstacles up to 2 cm thick and avoids obstacles on the construction site that it cannot paint.

“Technology adoption and increased digitization can help construction companies realize productivity gains,” said Daniel Martínez, vice president and general manager of HP Large Format Printing. “HP has played a key role in bridging the digital and physical worlds with printing solutions for architects and engineers over the past three decades. With HP SitePrint, we enable construction professionals to bring an idea to life faster and easier than ever, while ensuring layout accuracy and reducing rework costs.

HP worked with Leica Geosystems, a subsidiary of Hexagon, to integrate HP SitePrint with the Leica TS16 and Leica iCON iCR80 robotic total stations to help the robot achieve precise positioning and navigation. The company is also working with Topcon to integrate HP SitePrint with Topcon Layout Navigator and GT Robotic Total Stations.

“The existing manual layout process can be slow and labor intensive. Although they are performed by specialists, there is always a risk of human error, which can lead to costly rework,” said Albert Zulps, director of emerging technologies at Skanska, a global construction and development company that uses currently HP SitePrint on two prominent US projects. . “Layout experts are a scarce resource that add a lot of value in terms of planning and strategy, but often end up spending most of their time on manual execution. HP SitePrint allows us to do more with less , helping reduce lead times with a much faster layout process and allowing senior operators to focus on other critical activities like quality control.

HP claims that SitePrint can improve construction productivity up to ten times over manual processes. The company faces competition from Dusty Robotics, a robotics vendor that offers a similar building diagram printing robot.

Dusty Robotics’ FieldPrinter prints digital construction models directly onto the floor of construction sites. The company provided $45 million in Series B funding in May 2022.