Once you’ve got hold of your natural stone tiles from our broad selection here at the Stone Tile Emporium, you might either be looking forward to or dreading the prospect of having to actually install them. Whatever your views are on this type of DIY, the National Development Minister in Singapore believes that robots could make tiling floors “four times as efficient”.
In a blog post back in May, Khaw Boon Wan stated that he felt tiling was “one of the most labour-intensive processes in construction” and it could be enhanced and improved with the inclusion of robotics. With many companies based in East Asia looking into the prospect of incorporating robots into their industrial work, tiling could be the next on the list.
So how would robots actually carry out the tiling job? Mr Wan went on to explain that robots could carry out the labour-intensive aspects of the job, whilst we as humans could contribute by carrying out higher-precision tasks such as grouting or cutting odd-sized tiles. Researchers at the Singapore-Eth Centre Future Cities Laboratory believe that robots could potentially lay tiles two or three times faster than humans.
The questions is, should these robots become commercially available, could they benefit anything other than open plan living spaces with large surface areas? We are interested to get your feedback on this interesting story, so have your say in the comments section below.
