06 February 2019
Weather conditions: Sunny, max of 36oc, chance of a thunderstorm in the north and east in the afternoon and early evening. Winds south to southeasterly 15 to 20 km/h turning easterly 15 to 25 km/h early in the morning then tending southeast to southwesterly 25 to 35 km/h in the middle of the day.
Outdoor testing progressing well and attracting global interest
Hi all,
The last couple of weeks have been extremely busy at FBR. For anyone that hasn't seen yesterday's announcement, we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Brickworks, Australia's largest brick and block manufacturer. The intention is to sign a further shareholders agreement soon to commence our joint venture operation, Fastbrick Australia, which will be the first Wall as a Service™ operating entity anywhere in the world.
The MOU with Brickworks puts us in a really strong position to accelerate the commercialisation of the Hadrian X. We now have agreements in place with the largest block supplier in Australia and the largest block supplier in the world in Wienerberger, with both organisations already supplying bricks and blocks to very large existing customer bases.
We've welcomed a number of visitors at HQ over the past couple of weeks as well. Darren Bechtel and Curtis Rodgers from San Francisco-based venture capital fund Brick & Mortar Ventures recently visited us to get a first-hand look at the Hadrian X in action. As many of you would know, Curtis also sits on FBR's advisory committee. Brick & Mortar Ventures, which just finished raising a new US$97.2 million venture capital fund to continue its efforts in supporting early stage construction technology startups, shares FBR's interest in fostering the development and commercialisation of construction technology. Darren Bechtel will be presenting a keynote address at the Oracle Construction Technology Summit in Melbourne happening today and tomorrow.
Further, we have had the pleasure of hosting representatives of the Australian Government, as well as some international parties who are very interested in what FBR is doing.
Our outdoor testing program is going well and we have learned a lot so far. We have taken the Hadrian X offline for a few "engineering days" here and there, where we have been able to implement some changes developed as a result of the current testing program. We are already seeing these changes translating to improved performance of the machine, and we will continue testing in a wide range of conditions over the next few months to ensure optimised performance before we take the Hadrian Xs out to residential construction sites. Late last week we commenced night testing as well to see how the Hadrian X performs in low light conditions, and the results so far have been pleasing. The ability to perform at night is important for a number of reasons, not least of which is the significant demand for a robot capable of nightworks in various international markets.
Finally, we've made an effort to document as much of the current outdoor testing program as possible so that we can provide a bit more context around why we do things the way we do. The below video features Mike Pivac and Mark Sheridan explaining the F structure we build in our testing programs, and the way we view the Hadrian X manufacturing possibilities. Unfortunately we didn't capture Mike setting off the Hadrian X's emergency safety stop not once but twice, though at least we can confirm it works as intended.
Mark Pivac
Chief Technical Officer
FBR Limited