Construction workers world-wide, especially brick-layers, are in for a rude shock as their jobs will virtually disappear in the next 10 years. Fastbrick can lay perfect stacks of bricks in 1/4 the time it takes a skilled mason.  ? TN Editor

In the year 122, the Roman emperor Hadrian began building a stone wall that would eventually stretch more than 70 miles across Northern England. Constructed as a defensive fortification around the Roman-controlled province of Britannia, the wall took about six years to build; parts of it still stand and are a popular tourist attraction in England today.

Today, Hadrian's namesake is building walls at a much faster rate – much faster than any human can, in fact. Hadrian 105 is a robot developed by Australian company Fastbrick Robotics, and it's capable of laying bricks at a rate of 225 bricks per hour. For a human to lay that many bricks, it would take about half a day – and the Hadrian 105 is just a precursor for a much larger and faster robot to be named Hadrian X, which Fastbrick Robotics is currently working on.

The company describes the robots as "3D automated robotic bricklaying technology." It's not exactly the same as most 3D printing techniques we're used to seeing, as the bricks are already made – no raw materials are being extruded or sintered. It does meet the definition of additive manufacturing, though, as material is being deposited, one layer at a time, following a computer aided design.