Canvas CEO Kevin Albert said on Sept. 12 that his company wants to do for interior construction what the steam shovel did for digging and excavating. It unveiled the construction robotics company’s smaller form factor 1200CX drywall robot at its Mission District headquarters and makerspace in San Francisco.
“Around 2022, we started listening to what our customers wanted,” Albert said of Canvas, which started 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 Canvas has since incorporated customer feedback into its third-generation robot, the 1200CX.
At the Mission District event, the assembled media, investors and San Francisco robotics community watched the 1200CX perform a level four finish and then use a sanding attachment to finish the wall.
At 30 inches by 34.5 inches and weighing 1,200 pounds, the robot has a finished height of 12 feet and is significantly more compact than the previous generation, the 1550, which was built on a mobile elevating chassis .
Albert said one of the things Canvas felt was that a smaller form factor was needed for multi-family projects.
“That room [being demonstrated] it’s one of the smallest multi-family rooms you’ll see,” Albert said. “The reason we did this shot is because sometimes you’ll find a closet door against a bedroom door.”
Darren Bechtel, founder and CEO 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 his Universal Robots UR10 arm to a defined build. robotic platform
“We asked what are these unique pain points that you thought 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 boring, dirty and dangerous work, believing that no one will fight against something that helps them if it allows them to focus on the more complex, a job that is a bit more exciting, and no doubt [not going to fight] in the event that there are associated health risks. It’s a perfect job for a robot.”
Bechtel added that Brick & Mortar sees risk playing a role in the adoption of construction robotics, as finish consistency in a use case such as drywall can create rework or claims. If a product is based on quality, contractors will opt for certainty in the face of labor supply tensions, he said.
