Pursuits

Robots May Help Build Your Next Home and Fill the Labor Gap

  • Modular factories are saving U.S. developers time and money
  • ‘This has to be the wave of the future,’ consultant says
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The future of U.S. homebuilding depends on more people like Cyndicy Yarborough, a 26-year-old former Wal-Mart clerk with no background in construction.

At Blueprint Robotics in Baltimore, she works in a factory that builds houses like cars, on an assembly line, using robots that fire thousands of nails into studs each day and never miss. Yarborough operates a machine that lifts floors and walls and packs them onto a flatbed truck, the final step before delivery to a development site where they’ll be pieced together.