Sep 25, 2024

Photo by Jeff Yoders/ENR September 25, 2024 Canvas CEO Kevin Albert said Sept. 12 that his company wants to do for interior construction what the steam shovel did for digging and excavating. He unveiled the construction robotics company’s smaller form factor 1200CX drywall robot at the company’s Mission District headquarters and maker space in San Francisco. “By about 2022, we started hearing from our customers what they wanted,” Albert said of Canvas, which began as a subcontractor on Bay Area projects. “They were seeing that we could put a good finish on the wall, that our process works.” Albert added that since that time, Canvas has incorporated that customer feedback into its third generation robot, the 1200CX. At the Mission District event, assembled media, investors and the San Francisco robotics community saw the 1200CX perform a level-four finish and then use a sanding attachment to finish the wall. At 30 in. by 34.5 in., and weighing 1,200 lb, the robot has a 12-ft finishing height and is significantly more compact than the previous generation, the 1550, which was built on a mobile lift chassis. Albert said one of the things Canvas heard was that a smaller form factor was necessary for multifamily projects. “That room [being demonstrated] is one of the smallest multifamily bedrooms you’ll see,” Albert said. “The reason we made that bump-out is because sometimes you’ll find a closet door up against a bedroom door.” Darren Bechtel, founder and managing director of Brick & Mortar Ventures, was an early investor in Canvas and has advised the 26-employee company throughout its evolution from a robotics startup looking for a problem to solve with its Universal Robots UR10 arm to a defined construction robotics platform. “We asked, what are those unique pain points that you think that this robotic arm really had an application for,” Bechtel said. “They learned by doing, saw some of the pain points, decided to focus on what they described as the dull, dirty and dangerous work, believing that nobody’s going to fight against something to help them if it allows them to focus on the more complex work that’s a little bit more exciting, and definitely [not going to fight] in the case that there’s any health risks associated. That’s a perfect job for a robot.” Bechtel added that Brick & Mortar is seeing risk play a role in the adoption of construction robotics, as consistency of finish in a use case such as drywall can create rework or claims. If a deliverable is driven by quality, contractors will opt for certainty over strains on the labor supply, he said.