On this episode of The Construction Record Podcast, digital media editor Warren Frey speaks with Eric Law, the co-founder and CEO of Urban Machine, an Oakland-based construction technology company who builds robots that use artificial intelligence to remove metal contaminants from wood products.
He also explained the robot will be mobile and able to be transported to worksites so lumber becomes part of the waste disposal ecosystem, and added being able to remove metal products allows for a significant price drop for projects using designed or heritage wood. Law spoke to the training process where Urban Machine trained its AI on extensive photographs of wood products so it could learn to recognize metal waste and remove it, allowing wood to be reused in future construction projects instead of disposing of the material in a landfill or an incinerator.