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Val’s mission is a simple but crucial part of developer Horizon Legacy, which is scheduled to open this fall.
On the scene, the company said Val’s skills are unique. She can put her own 440 pounds over 440 pounds and handle the work of about 20 businessmen.
Her boss admits she is not perfect. They hope that over time, she can work twice as quickly as she goes by and get trained to handle other “despicable” tasks she has never done before.
Val is a robot – built by developers to handle labor-intensive elements of construction projects to assemble houses faster and more efficiently.
Operated by a crew of three to five technicians and programmers, Horizon Legacy CEO Nhung Nguyen said “doing most of the heavy, repetitive work” or, rather, “parts that people don’t want to do in buildings.”
“It’s not very extensive before,” Nguyen said.
“We think this is really a different approach to the problems we’ve been experiencing and can extend solutions to the housing crisis and Canadian labor shortage.”
Experts say the real estate construction industry will need to be more innovative as Canada begins building millions of new homes in the coming years, including through increased adoption of robotics and other automation tools.
Val is one of several examples of this company doing this. The alternative is a more extensive, complex process, Nguyen said.
“She can program to do more later. “This can help make people work better on building sites and give young people a reason to go back to construction projects,” she said. ”
In Sudbury, Ontario, researcher Steven Beites and a team of engineers have been working on their own prototypes of home builders. He said it could pick up a wall panel, move it and rotate it, and then place it in place.
“It’s an automated process through machine vision,” said Beats, an assistant professor at the McEwan University School of Architecture at Laurent.
The goal is to give the system an idea of which panel to pick up and where it is placed in the structure while avoiding collisions, he said.
The company and researchers will alleged that support more robotics in construction are pointing to a common reason.
They say an industry that is too slow to incorporate automation into its operations is now facing a pressing problem: Labor shortages will urgently need more housing amid a deterioration in Canada.
The Canadian Housing Builders Association estimates that 22% of residential construction workers will retire over the next decade. A report from Royal Bank of Canada last year estimated that Canada would need more than 500,000 additional construction workers on average to build all the homes needed between now and 2030 to increase affordability.
Beites said the problem is acutely felt in areas such as northern Ontario, where transaction shortages and rising labor costs are intensified by construction seasons with longer winter restrictions – all of which are increasing the cost of building homes.
“Our construction industry is declining very slowly. We have an aging workforce and we don’t attract young, tech-savvy adults or individuals into the construction industry,” he said.
Unlike the automotive industry that has faster robotics, home building is “not an industry with large players with large factories,” said Kevin Lee, CEO of CHBA.
He said that because real estate has experienced a roller coaster of boom and bust times, it consists primarily of smaller companies that are often subcontracted employees who usually build houses on site in prevention facilities rather than building them on a large scale.
“Our industry is built to bypass the ups and downs,” Lee said.
“We have some housing facilities that we do think is the potential for the future, but unless we get some support… you just don’t see the industry investing heavily because it’s too risky.”
However, as the technology goes by over time, Li predicts that robotics will be adopted.
Some say the industry can’t wait to make this leap.
Last month, Canadian artificial intelligence company Promise Robotics announced the opening of a new 60,000-square-foot warehouse in Calgary that will be a site-based housing construction powered by AI-powered robots.
Starting this summer, it says the new plant can produce up to 1 million square feet of housing each year. Instead of building their own factories, home builders are able to access the technology through Promise Robotics’ “Factory Services” model, which can also be offered in their existing Edmonton facilities.
“This robot is able to perform tasks that are traditionally really just human fields,” said Ramtin Attar, co-founder of Promise Robotics. The technology can produce walls, floors and stairs, he said, because the robot’s functions include cutting, cutting, nailing, tightening and bonding.
“More importantly, they not only have to perform these tasks, but they also really understand the task sequence that really builds a reliable component of the house you live in for decades.”
Attar said the model allows for 60% faster elements of a house to be built in traditional buildings, where up to 20 different transactions are required on site.
“What has traditionally been done in three to four weeks, we do it in two to three days,” he said.
Back at Gananoque’s project, Nguyen said she hopes robots like Val can pave the way for how home builders see their operations.
Val should be seen as a “tool” that makes life easier on construction sites, especially for potential workers who otherwise find themselves discouraging themselves into the industry.
“Building is hard to attract labor, to attract people to the site because people are smart. They don’t want to do numb, trivial tasks,” she said.
“I have no doubt that this way is the way in the future, and this way can change the equation.”
This report by Canadian media was first released on March 9, 2025.
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AI Automation Canadian Homebuilding HorizonLegacy Kevin Lee Laurentian University McEwen School of Architecture Commitment Robotics Robotics Robotics Sammy Hudes Canadian Press
Last modified: March 9, 2025
