FBR has announced it will team up with German manufacturing company Liebherr, as plans to deploy its building and construction robot units, dubbed Hadrian X, to the US continue.
FBR has announced it will team up with German manufacturing company Liebherr, as plans to deploy its building and construction robot units, dubbed Hadrian X, to the US continue.
Under its agreement with Liebherr USA, the robot technology company will be able to utilise Liebherr's facilities in Miami, located in the US state of Florida, where it will be able to not only maintain and service its Hadrian X units, but also engage in knowledge swapping with local staff.
On January 18, FBR signed a joint venture agreement with CRH Ventures Americas, a major concrete block manufacturer, with the intent of sending up to 300 Hadrian X units to the US.
FBR confirmed at the end of January that it had successfully raised $12.6 million to further enhance these plans, after issuing around 466.3 million fully paid ordinary shares at an offer price of 2.7 cents per share.
Last month, the company confirmed a Hadrian X unit had successfully passed its Perth-based factory acceptance test, completed indoors, under strict conditions and supervision. Required to execute an effective lay rate of 285 concrete blocks an hour, the unit managed to lay 330 concrete blocks per hour.
A Hadrian X unit and FBR personnel will now head to Florida, where the building and construction robot will need to complete an outdoor site acceptance test. Should it pass this test, the unit will then proceed to the US demonstration program phase - where it will be required to construct walls for between five and 10 single-story homes.
An independent structural engineer will be on hand to ensure all of the walls meet both design, building and consistency requirements.
"Use of the Miami facility is of significant benefit to FBR and will allow us to demonstrate the capabilities of our technology to US builders in pursuit of a pipeline of work for the future wall as a service operating entity," FBR's managing director and chief executive officer Mike Pivac said.
"Extending the term of phase one of our memorandum of understanding will allow us the necessary time to get our robots on the ground in the United States, and give the Liebherr team who may be directly involved in the large-scale manufacture of the Hadrian X robots the opportunity to work directly with them and build their hands-on knowledge of the technology by working with us to service and maintain them at their facilities.”
FBR last traded at 23 cents per share, as of 11.11am AWST.
