13 February 2019

First outdoor build complete.

Hi all,

As a lot of you would have read earlier this week, we have completed our first ever outdoor build of a house using the Hadrian X, proving that our technology works in outdoor environments. This is the culmination of a lot of years of hard work, and we're all very proud of the achievement and the team that got us here. This is not the end of the story, but rather just the beginning. We've hit the baseline of the first application of DST, and we'll now focus on really pushing the Hadrian X, implementing some more changes that have been designed as a result of the testing process so far, and ramping up the lay rate.

The outdoor program has been very successful to date, and our team have done an excellent job of making improvements on the fly while ensuring we follow best practice engineering process. Sometimes I think the enormity of the task we undertook is lost on people, but there's a reason why we are the first team in the world to achieve this, and that is because it is not easy to do, and it's why there is such a big commercial opportunity in front of us. I have had the pleasure of welcoming a number of VIPs, Government Officials and Investors to our HQ over the past few weeks, and I can tell you that each and every one of them was blown away by what they saw. When the Hadrian X is in full flight it is a sight to behold.

We can already see improvement in machine performance since the indoor build conducted at our test facility, and we'll continue our outdoor testing program for the next few months to try and capture as much data as possible, particularly as the weather starts to turn. Having a comprehensive data set is extremely important for us, primarily because it gives us the best opportunity to get the Hadrian X battle-hardened before we take it out to residential sites later in the year, but it is also important as we start to look at enhancements like artificial intelligence, where the output quality is a direct result of the input quality. This is part of the reason why night testing was so important to us for this build as well – not only is there a significant market for an automated bricklaying machine that can work at night, but the change in light conditions and ambient temperature and the data we can gather from having the Hadrian X work in all these different conditions is invaluable to us.

The video embedded below is episode one of the story of our first outdoor build. Those with a keen eye will notice that a few of the blocks in the first two courses didn't quite meet the accuracy requirements that we're looking for, but rather than shy away from this, we used it as a learning opportunity. Remember that these were among the first blocks we'd ever laid outside, so all things considered it was actually an impressive result, albeit with room for improvement. After fixing the blockwork where required with a manual QC process, we took the Hadrian X offline for a few days in order to adjust our control systems software to counteract the issue. Every time we were met with a challenge during this outdoor build, we conducted an analysis of why it happened, developed a fix, and recreated the testing conditions in order to demonstrate that our fix was effective. This is a process that will continue for the next few months, and will ultimately result in bringing a faster, better, stronger product to market.

Over the next couple of weeks we'll be bringing you more info on our outdoor testing, both past and present, so please stay tuned to our social media channels and our website for updates.

Mike Pivac
Chief Executive Officer 
FBR Limited