over the centuries engineers and
architects have devised ever new ways to
build taller stronger and more beautiful
creations using game-changing materials
like steel girders earthquake proof
foundations and glass curtain walls but
what does the future hold for
construction technology will there come
a day when noisy construction crews are
replaced by swarms of autonomous
nanobots will the cracks in concrete
foundations one day miraculously heal
themselves or gas stations be replaced
by electric cars running on
self-charging roads keep watching for
our full list of ten of the most
exciting construction innovations of the
near future
self-healing concrete
concrete is the single most widely used
construction material in the world in
fact it is the second most consumed
substance on earth after water think of
all the concrete homes office buildings
churches and bridges built each year
concrete is cheap and widely adaptable
but it's also susceptible to cracking
and deterioration on their stresses like
extreme heat and cold in the past the
only way to fix cracked concrete was to
patch it reinforce it or knock it down
and start from scratch but not anymore
in 2010 a graduate student and chemical
engineering professor at the University
of Rhode Island created a new type of
smart concrete that heals its own cracks
the concrete mix is embedded with tiny
capsules of sodium silicate when the
crack forms the capsules rupture and
release a gel like healing agent that
hardens to fill the void this is not the
only method of self-healing concrete
other researchers have used bacteria or
embedded glass capillaries or polymer
microcapsules to achieve similar results
however the Rhode Island researchers
believe their method is the most
cost-effective prolonging the life of
concrete could have huge environmental
benefits worldwide concrete production
currently accounts for 5 percent of
global carbon dioxide emissions smart
concrete would not only make our
structures safer but also cut back on
greenhouse gases
carbon nanotubes a nanami tur is one
billion for the meter
that's impossibly small a single sheet
of paper is 100,000 nanometers your
fingernail grows approximately one
nanometer every second even a strand of
your DNA is 2.5 nanometers wide to
construct materials at the nano scale
would seem impossible but using
cutting-edge techniques like electron
beam lithography scientists and
engineers have successfully created
tubes of carbon with walls that are only
one nanometer thick when a larger
particle is divided into increasingly
smaller parts the proportion of its
surface area to its mass increases these
carbon nanotubes have the highest
strength-to-weight ratio of any material
on earth and can be stretched two
million times longer than their
thickness carbon nanotubes are so light
and strong that they can be embedded
into other building materials like
metals concrete wood and glass to add
density and tensile strength engineers
are even experimenting with nanoscale
sensors that can monitor stresses inside
building materials and identify
potential fractures or cracks before
they occur transparent aluminum for
decades chemical engineers have dreamed
of a material that combines the strength
and durability of metal with the crystal
clear purity of glass such a clear metal
could be used to construct towering
glass walled skyscrapers that require
less internal support secure military
buildings could install fin transparent
metal windows impervious to the highest
caliber artillery fire and think of the
monstrous aquarium you can build with
this stuff back in the 1980s scientists
began experimenting with a novel type of
ceramic made from a powdery mix of
aluminum oxygen and nitrogen a ceramic
is any hard usually crystalline material
that's made by a process of heating and
cooling in this case the aluminum powder
is placed under immense pressure heated
for days at 2,000 degrees Celsius and
finally polished to produce a perfectly
clear glass like material with the
strength of aluminum known as
transparent aluminum or long the
space-age material is already being used
the military for making armored windows
and optical lenses permeable concrete
during a heavy storm sheets of rainwater
pour down on roadways sidewalks and
parking lots scouring of surface debris
and pollutants and washing potentially
toxic chemicals like gasoline directly
into sewers and streams the US
Environmental Protection Agency
identifies stormwater runoff and paved
urban areas as a major source of water
pollution nature has its own way of
filtering out toxins from rain water
soil is a magnificent filter for metals
in other and organic materials as
rainwater passes down through soil
levels microorganisms and plant roots
absorb excess chemicals
knowing this engineers have created a
new type of permeable concrete that
allows rainwater to pass right through
pavement and let nature do its work
permeable or pervious concrete is made
with larger grains of rock and sand
leaving between 15 and 35 percent of
open space in the pavement slabs of
permeable concrete are laid atop gravel
or another porous base material that
lets rainwater settle to the soil
substrate beneath permeable concrete is
an excellent replacement for asphalt in
parking lots not only does it
significantly decrease runoff but also
the lighter color of concrete reflects
sunlight and stays cooler in the summer
aerogel insulation if Michelangelo's
famous marble Statue of David was made
of aerogel it would weigh only two
kilograms aerogel is one of the least
dense substances on earth a foam like
solid material that holds its shape
despite being almost as light as air
some types have densities just three
times heavier than air but typically air
joules are 15 times heavier than their
you might think of gel as a wet
substance such as hair gel but hair gel
is made by removing the liquid from a
gel all that's left is the silica
structure which is 90 to 99 percent air
aerogel is almost weightless but can be
spun out into thin sheets of aerogel
fabric in construction projects aerogel
fabric demonstrates super insulating
properties its porous structure makes it
difficult for heat to pass through in
tests aerogel fabric had two to four
times the insulating power of
traditional fiberglass or foam
insulation once the price comes down it
could be widely used in construction
temperature reactive tiles if you are
alive in 1991 and lived above-ground
odds are good that you owned a
hypercolor t-shirt by some scientific
miracle a miracle called thermochromic
died
the folks at hypercolor made t-shirts
that change color with your body
temperature the commercials made it look
super cool but in reality the hottest
parts of your body are usually your
armpits glowing armpits are not super
cool right today a company called moving
color manufacturers glass decorative
tiles coated with thermochromic paint
that come alive with changing surface
temperatures at room temperature the
tiles are a glossy black but when you
touch the tiles or hit them with direct
light or warm water the colors transform
like the Northern Lights into iridescent
blues pinks and greens the coolest
application has to be the color shifting
shower the good news for moving color is
that houses don't have armpits robots
warm construction one of nature's most
ingenious builders is the humble termite
with a brain the size of a grain of sand
it works alongside hundreds of thousands
of mountain mates to build colossal and
complex mud structures termites captured
the attention of Harvard robotics
researchers because the insects don't
take orders from some central termite
architect each termit works alone
according to genetically programmed
rules of behavior together as a swarm of
single minded individuals they create
monumental works of mud inspired by
termites
researchers at Harvard self-organizing
systems Research Group have built small
construction robotics program to work
together as it's warm the four wheeled
robots can build brick like walls by
lifting each brick climbing the wall and
laying the brick in an open spot they
have sensors to detect the presence of
other robots and rules for getting out
of each other's way like termites no one
is controlling them but they are
programmed to collectively build a
specific design
imagine the applications swarming robots
building levee walls along a dangerously
flooded coastline thousands of tiny
robots constructing a space station on
Mars for deep underwater gas pipelines
being assembled by swimming swarms of
BOTS a similar experiment used a swarm
of autonomous flying robots to build an
artfully undulating brick tower 3d
printed houses 3d printing has finally
gone mainstream MakerBot is selling
nifty and just about affordable desktop
machines that can print out fully
rendered 3d plastic toys jewelry machine
parts and artificial limbs but what if
you want to print something bigger than
a shoebox could you actually build a 3d
printer large enough to print out a
plastic house the answer is yes the
Dutch architecture firm has launched an
ambitious public art project to build a
3d printed house but first they had to
build one of the world's largest 3d
printers called the camera maker or a
room maker using the same plastic source
material as small-scale 3d printers the
camera maker can print out large Lego
like plastic components that will be
assembled into individual rooms of the
house the rooms will then lock together
again think Lego with the printed
exteriors of the home designs to look
like a traditional Dutch canal house
meanwhile a Chinese construction company
is building houses using a giant 3d
printer that sprays layers of cement and
construction waste to assemble the homes
the company says the houses will cost
less than $5,000 each and it can produce
up to 10 of them in a day
smart roads Google is hogging all of the
limelight with its self-driving car but
what good are smart cars if they still
have to drive on dumb roads one of the
most exciting new ideas is a roadway
that acts as a charger for electric
vehicles a New Zealand company has
already built a large power pad that can
wirelessly charge a parked electric car
the next step is to embed the wireless
charging technology into actual Road
surfacing so electric vehicles can
recharge on the move no more refueling
stations other intriguing ideas that may
come true one day include road surfaces
that absorb sunlight to generate
electricity or even cooler embedding the
road with piezoelectric crystals that
capture the vibrations of passing cars
and convert them into usable energy
building with co2 carbon dioxide spewed
from power plants and automobiles is the
single largest source of manmade
greenhouse gas every year we pump more
than 30 billion metric tons of co2 into
the atmosphere where it speeds the
damaging effects of global warming while
the energy sector experiments with
trapping or sequestering co2 emissions
underground a team of researchers at
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
has successfully used genetically
modified yeast to convert co2 gas into
solid carbon-based building materials
like the Harvard termite team the MIT
researchers were also inspired by Nature
this time the abalone like other
crustaceans abalone can convert ocean
born co2 and minerals into calcium
carbonate to build their rock-hard
shells the researchers isolated the
enzyme that abalone used to mineralize
the co2 and engineered a batch of yeast
to produce it a beaker full of
genetically modified yeast can produce
one kilogram of solid carbonate from
only 0.5 kilograms of co2 imagine how
many carbon bricks they could make with
30 billion metric tons of co2
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