BC Indigenous Housing Society’s Housing Project Walls Being Built With Intelligent City Robotics

Intelligent City, a Vancouver-based company that started producing commercial mass timber panels in January 2024, is using robots to produce passive house panels for the BC Indigenous Housing Society’s new nine-story mass timber multi-family housing project on the east side of Vancouver, the Journal of Commerce by ConstructConnect reported (4-3-24).

The facility uses robotics and digital technology to bring together panel design and production. The two processes are usually carried out separately and sequentially.

Intelligent City’s factory has five big industrial robots arranged in manufacturing assembly zones that together comprise a safe assembly line. The robots, which are remote-controlled with proprietary software, lift, position, and custom-cut panels of mass-timber walls, floors, and ceilings. Electrical channels and ventilation ducts are cut into the panels before they leave the factory.

The new mass timber multi-family housing project uses cross laminated timber floors and envelope panels. The panels will be installed in a basket-weave pattern around the exterior of the building.