university’s global solution program a
program dedicated to positively
impacting the lives of a billion people
in a decade our mission was to find out
how that’s when I started looking at
poverty and when researching poverty I
discovered something amazing I
discovered that a key feature of poverty
is the lack of housing and the solution
could be very simple all we have to do
is completely redefine the entire
housing industry globally from scratch
this might take some time so in the
meantime let us at least use technology
to do a better job when I was looking at
the link between poverty and the lack of
housing I asked three main questions how
many people don’t have a house where do
they live today and why don’t they have
a house the answers are in covered with
a real shocker today they’re already
more than one and a half billion people
without access to housing that’s roughly
twenty three percent of the population
on earth almost a quarter and more than
fifty percent of the planet are already
living in cities and the demand to live
in cities is growing rapidly wait twenty
three percent of our planet a quarter
where are all these people how come that
when I’m walking down the street I don’t
see every fourth or fifth person living
on the curb maybe because we used to
think that these are the homeless or
maybe because we think we have it under
control with solutions like shelter but
you see only about a hundred million
individuals globally of this type of
homeless and only about 60 million
individuals globally are internally
displaced or refugees together these two
amount for about ten percent of the one
and a half billion people without access
to adequate housing so who and where are
the
rest these are many of us the working
class senior citizens young adults and
professionals we are the other ninety
percent and while we might not be living
directly on the street but in buildings
in many cases these buildings are
dilapidated broken or unsafe or living
in overcrowded quarters or having to
commute multiple hours a day to work or
school or simply paying more than thirty
percent of your income on housing I call
this entire group the houseless to be
houseless means lack of access to
adequate affordable and desirable
housing the houseless are vulnerable
invisible individuals living in
inadequate housing are seven times more
likely to drop out of high school
they’re twice as likely to experience
violent crime and are at a much higher
risk for both cardiovascular and
respiratory conditions among other
severe health issues so why why are so
many of us houseless this turned out to
be a two-sided coin on the one side this
population is clearly not making enough
money to afford adequate housing but on
the other side the way in which we build
homes today is not affordable for a
quarter of the planet I decided to focus
on a second how to create affordable
let’s look at a different industry for a
second cause a hundred years ago cars
were made like this today they’re
manufactured like this using
sophisticated machines and robots with
very little manpower the car has gone
from a rich man’s novelty to a
mass-produced product available to
almost anyone and homes a hundred years
ago homes were built like this
and today they’re still built like this
not much has changed you see when you
think about it the brick for example the
brick was created for the human hand to
be easily carried and manipulated the
brick was invented 9,000 years ago but
it’s still commonly used today and not
because it’s the best way to build so
that’s when I started thinking if robots
are building cars and I know a thing or
two about robots I’ve been researching
them since I was 15 building little
firefighting ones and that’s when it
came together why not let robots build
homes it makes sense robots will always
outperform humans on tasks that are
repetitive and demand high precision and
building is exactly this repetitive
tasks that mandate high precision once I
realized that it makes sense to build
homes with robots my next question was
which which machines are best suited to
build homes so I started low looking
searching for the cutting edge of the
building industry I found machines like
this and I visited buildings like this
and when searching the fringes for the
most innovative solutions I saw 3d
printers for concrete and bridges and
even robots that span more than 500
meters across now some of you might be
thinking that’s fantastic just create a
new machine dedicated to build
affordable housing not that simple to
design a new machine from scratch costs
a lot of money and takes a lot of time
so it seemed that the only way to
introduce robotics into affordable
construction be to utilize existing
technologies and that’s exactly what
we’re doing in our lab we’re designing
robots to build homes faster and cheaper
our goal to save at least six
percent of the cost of construction
we’re taking existing machines like
cranes and with the help of sensors and
artificial intelligence turning these
into robots in the future a construction
site will look like a ballet of robots
bring a structure to life the materials
sustainable design and complexity
endless even our pipes will self heal so
we don’t have leaks anymore our
buildings will generate their own energy
but also most of our water and food but
you see buildings and construction costs
only part of the problem that’s why last
year I joined forces with the XPrize
foundation a non-profit the through
competitions challenges technology to
benefit mankind together with my team we
set out to design a competition that
would result in the solution to the
housing crisis we already knew that
construction was only part of the
problem and quickly understood that the
housing crisis is different from country
to country but also from city to city
yet no matter where you live there are
four things that are probably the same
regulations are stagnant infrastructure
completely inadequate construction
technologies have not evolved and we’re
still developing with antiquated
financial models in short were operating
on ignorance so after six months of
dedicated research we came up with the
future of housing roadmap a series of
competitions that would inspire
municipalities to rethink regulations
that define what where and how we build
inspire the innovators to create
self-sufficient infrastructure and even
turning to biology to synthetically grow
buildings that would actually make us
healthier we planned a decade worth of
challenges so that the future of housing
is affordable for and desired by all
you see access to adequate housing is
one of the most fundamental needs in
life yet it was only this last August
that the United Nations declared the
lived experience illustrates that the
right to life cannot be separated from
the right to a secure place to live
housing is an enabler to life and since
this is one of the greatest challenges
that we humanity are already facing it’s
time for us to rethink old methods to
harness our creativity and technologies
to make sure that our children to make
sure that all children will never find
themselves houseless thank you [Applause]