LandTech prepared a topographic and utility location survey for the new Engineering building on the UT Campus. Below is a portion of the mapping we prepared for this project:
According to a recent WBIR news article, ground breaking for this project will begin this summer.
I found this interesting video on paint that is electrically conductive. Looks like this would have a lot of unique applications. (Source: Mashable, https://mashable.com/)
There has been an explosion of the use of drones, or small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS), in the surveying industry. This concept of small unmanned systems also applies to surveying water bodies.
Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASVs) are robotic vehicles that sit on the surface of a water body, recording data about the water body, including mapping the bottom surface contours.
Seafloor Systems provides a variety of products for hydrographic surveying. Below is a video of their ASV products.
Skyscraper construction is expensive and time consuming. But we live in an age where many things have been industrialized, such as the production of cars and even farms.
I came across an article that is 6 years old, about the construction of a 30-Story building in 15 days, at a price of just under $100 per square foot.
“So far, Broad has built 16 structures in China, plus another in Cancun. They are fabricated in sections at two factories in Hunan, roughly an hour’s drive from Broad Town. From there the modules—complete with preinstalled ducts and plumbing for electricity, water, and other infrastructure—are shipped to the site and assembled like Legos. The company is in the process of franchising this technology to partners in India, Brazil, and Russia. What it’s selling is the world’s first standardized skyscraper, and with it, Zhang aims to turn Broad into the McDonald’s of the sustainable building industry.”
My first thought was this construction probably results in an unsafe building, but the building design has been tested to resist a 9.0-magnitude earthquake.
You can read the entire article here: https://www.wired.com/2012/09/broad-sustainable-building-instant-skyscraper/
Below is a time lapse video of the structure being constructed.
It’s been about 10 years since the end of the last housing boom in the 2000’s. But now it appears there has been a complete reversal of the problems experienced a decade ago……now there is a historic shortage of new homes.
A recent article in The Wall Street Journal titled “The Next Housing Crisis: A Historic Shortage of New Homes” describes the issues surrounding the shortage of new home construction.
“Home construction per household a decade after the bust remains near the lowest level in 60 years of record-keeping, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
A combination of tightened housing regulations, a lack of construction labor and a land shortage in highly prized areas is driving the crisis, according to industry experts.
The National Association of Home Builders estimates builders will start fewer than 900,000 new homes in 2018, less than the roughly 1.3 million homes needed to keep up with population growth. The overall inventory of new and existing homes for sale hit its lowest level on record in the fourth quarter of 2017, at 1.48 million, according to the National Association of Realtors.”
There has been a lot of news lately about self-driving cars, but self-driving trucks is an industry that has fierce competition between Uber and Google.
Uber is operating self-driving trucks in Arizona on its freight-hauling app, and Waymo (a division of Google) will begin operating self-driving trucks in the Atlanta area.
” Uber’s big push to dominate the trucking industry took a leap forward today with the announcement that the ride-hailing giant is now operating its fleet of self-driving trucks on its freight-hauling app. The shipments are taking place in Arizona, where the ride-hailing giant is also testing out its robot taxis. Uber said it is using a transfer hub model, in which the trucks drive autonomously on the highway and human drivers take over for the last miles.”
I found the video below on the Barsha Pump manufactured by aQysta, a company founded by three engineers from the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands (https://www.aqysta.com/product/). The water wheel pump utilizes the energy from flowing water in rivers for pumping. The pump doesn’t require any fuel or electricity, and is a cost effective, sustainable solution for pumping water in developing countries.
I found an interesting video from Marshalltown Products showing their roller concrete stamping tools. This is a very quick and easy way to make a plain concrete slab more visually appealing.
