Purdue Northwest Shares in $3.19 Million HUD Project Testing Robotics and Super Intelligence for Affordable Housing
Purdue University Northwest (PNW), in Hammond, Lake County, Indiana, announced on October 28 that its College of Technology will share in a $3.19 million grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to study whether robotics and super intelligence (SI) can help build affordable housing faster and more cheaply. PNW will receive approximately $718,000 to support the three-year project.
The project, called Scalable Construction Automation for Labor-Efficient and Affordable Housing Expansion (SCALE-HOME), is an industry-driven collaboration bringing together academia, housing developers and regional stakeholders. Illinois-based Lightspeed Build Technologies is developing the advanced construction automation technologies, and PNW researchers will independently evaluate how those technologies perform in active housing developments: whether they can improve construction speed, efficiency and affordability.
Afshin Zahraee serves as the project's principal investigator and evaluation director at PNW. With the United States short of affordable homes and the construction industry short of workers, the HUD-funded project is designed to test automation as part of the answer, with an independent university team verifying the results.
PNW is the public university serving Northwest Indiana, with campuses in Hammond and Westville. The project's findings are intended to give developers and policymakers evidence on whether construction automation deserves a larger role in expanding the affordable housing supply.
Purdue University Northwest news release
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 普渡大学西北分校校门标识（资料图）。Chris Light 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / The entrance sign of Purdue University Northwest (file photo). Photo by Chris Light, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
