<p>ETH Zurich researchers taught an autonomous excavator to construct dry stone walls itself using boulders weighing several tonnes and demolition debris.</p>
<p>In brief:</p>
<ul> <li style="text-align:justify">Until today, dry stone wall construction has involved vast amounts of manual labour.</li> <li style="text-align:justify">A multidisciplinary team of ETH Zurich researchers developed a method of using an autonomous excavator to construct a dry-stone wall that is six metres high and sixty-five metres long.</li> <li style="text-align:justify">Dry stone walls are resource efficient as they use locally sourced materials, such as concrete slabs that are low in embodied energy</li> </ul>