The Future of Construction

The Future of Construction

On Saturday September 30 a diverse team of 27 students from many of BTH’s master programs took on the challenge of innovating the Future of the Construction industry together with Volvo CE’s emerging technologies.

The Makerspace was put to good use.

The students were challenged to the extreme by being asked for innovative concepts and solutions that meets and responds to topics relating to various natural disasters such as, flooding, earth quakes, hurricanes, and forrest fires.

Starting out early in the morning, the students first got to familiarise themselves with the problem and the potential user that they are going to serve. Thereafter they got to explore opportunities that other competitors have not dealt with yet. 

The rest of the day was devoted to prototyping in several iterations, with pitches and feedback sessions in between to collegially assist each other in moving forwards with the concepts and ideas. 

Prototype concept

 The final prototype was a Dark Horse prototype, which by name is stemming from the world of horse racing as depicting the competitor with the highest odds, and in the world of prototyping and innovation depicts the longest Moonshot idea. These concepts were presented Hollywood-style with a short skit played out by each development team. 

The winning dark horse concept about resilience to flooding.

More info 

The day was devoted to a design-build-test exploration exercise in innovation where coaches from the Product Development Research Lab was on hand to offer a challenge to shape future concepts for the construction industry. 
Using various prototyping materials and robotics kits, you are invited to prototype solutions for new products and services of a new automated and electrified environment.

As much as this is a fun event, it was also aimed to be the kick-off for future challenges with students during the coming academic year. There are many interesting topics to explore, design, build and test, which will be an opportunity for future projects and master thesis together with Volvo Construction Equipment and other research partners.

Gallery

 

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