Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are central to prize-winning technology tapped to accelerate new housing production on a nationwide scale. Promise Robotics has been awarded game-changer gold in the fifth round of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s (CMHC) housing supply challenge, focused on readily replicable and logistically effective approaches for reducing conventional construction timelines.
The Toronto-headquartered company uses AI-programmed robots to produce building components in its facilities located in Calgary and Edmonton. The industrialized homebuilding model streamlines design, procurement and project management into a single AI-informed platform, enlists the speed and precision of robotized production and centralizes it in a weather-controlled venue. The resulting factory-built components can then be assembled in advertised times of six hours for a single-family home or 14 days for a 64-unit apartment building.
“The goal is to help the industry to significantly increase its capacity in homebuilding,” Ramtin Attar, co-founder and chief executive officer of Promise Robotics, told a gathering during Toronto Tech Week earlier this summer. “So imagine: whether you’re doing single-family or multi-storey, you submit the design and we turn those designs into robotic instructions to manufacturers that are deployed across warehouses located anywhere. They integrate with local trades and supply chains and they produce and assemble all the components within the area where you are located.”
The recently announced CMHC prize arises from a 15-month process beginning with more than 250 applicants. Adjudicators were looking for endeavours that could mobilize innovation, better integrate various segments of housing production and unplug bottlenecks that prolong and complicate planning, financing and construction. (Other rounds of the challenge have focused on: data management; pre-construction issues; Northern and remote communities; and construction processes and materials to support affordability and resilience.)
The field was first narrowed to 18 semi-finalists that each received $1 million to further their business development. From there, nine finalists each received a $3 million award, and the final four game-changers collectively received an additional $15 million. Besides the top honours for Promise Robotics, three companies were named game-changer silver recipients:
- Tapestry Community Capital, an advisory for community bonds and related investment and capital-raising services for affordable housing;
- mddl, an advisory supporting capacity building for residential infill, particularly mid-rise development; and
- One Bowl, a modular housing company, specializing in energy-efficient, cost-effective turnkey housing for First Nations communities.
“Innovators across the country have answered the call of the housing supply challenge, and I’m thrilled to see the work these game-changers are doing to accelerate housing production,” says Gregor Robertson, Canada’s Minister of Housing and Infrastructure.
Speaking during Toronto Tech Week, Attar argued the evolution from on-site to in-factory production will bring more cost certainty and address labour shortages in “an industry that has experienced 0 per cent productivity gains in four decades”. While citing support from community colleges and some trade unions, he acknowledged that the approach may not sit well with custom builders.
“We have generalized blueprint construction. There’s less customization. Our robots can build a home today, an apartment tomorrow, a townhome the next. And they don’t care,” Attar said. “We need solutions that can mobilize the entire sector and create jobs of the future on the scale that we really need. We need tools that can fundamentally retool the entire homebuilding industry.”
