immo!nvest – Die Plattform für Standorte und Immobilien

Tag: Materialprüfungs

  • Viboo wins Empa Innovation Award

    Viboo wins Empa Innovation Award

    Every two years since 2006, Empa has honored in-house innovations or successful technology transfers from science to industry with the Empa Innovation Award. This year, the CHF 5,000 prize went to the Empa spin-off viboo , the research institute said in a statement . The young company based in Dübendorf has developed a self-learning algorithm that uses weather and building data to calculate the optimum energy use of a building several hours in advance.

    The algorithm developed by Felix Bünning and Benjamin Huber together with Empa Senior Researcher Matthias Sulzer in Empa's Urban Energy System Lab has already been tested in pilot tests in the NEST innovation building and in an Empa administration building. It has been shown that the approach can save around a quarter of the heating energy, according to the statement.

    For the application, only the analogue thermostats have to be replaced by intelligent thermostats. Here, viboo is already working with Danfoss and wants to get other manufacturers of such thermostats, such as ABB and Schneider Electric , on board for further pilot projects. Huber wants to reciprocate the award with a contribution that “empa will get through the coming heating period well”, the viboo co-founder is quoted as saying in the press release.

  • Drone swarm prints building materials in flight

    Drone swarm prints building materials in flight

    An international research team from the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research ( Empa ) has developed a swarm of cooperative drones that are used in construction. The example is the cooperation between bees and wasps. As Empa reports , the flying robots print out 3D materials in the air under human control and place them in the designated places. The performance of these BuilDrones is recorded and monitored by a second fleet, the ScanDrones. They also specify the upcoming production steps.

    Empa also demonstrates in a video that this is the first time that such a detailed 3D print has been carried out by a free-flying robot. The specialist journal “Nature” published the study by Professor Mirko Kovac’s team from the Materials and Technology Center of Robotics online on September 21 and made it the cover story of its latest issue of September 22 .

    The so-called aerial additive manufacturing is designed in such a way that the drones can adapt their activity to the different geometries of the structure during the construction process. They act autonomously during their deployment. A human controller observes the process and makes adjustments as necessary based on the information provided by the drones.

    “We have demonstrated that the drones can work autonomously to construct and repair buildings, at least in the laboratory,” Kovac is quoted as saying. This could make it easier to work in hard-to-reach areas such as high-rise buildings. According to Empa, the experts now want to work together with construction companies to validate the solutions developed in practice and to develop new repair and production options.