RIC Robotics is teasing the Zyrex, what it calls a Giantroid.6 meters in height with a 7 meter span, the autonomous (but human-monitored) construction robot is slated for release as a prototype in 2026.Par for the course in the evolution of robotic construction, it is AI-powered, and the company hopes that the robot can weld and cut, as well as complete carpentry tasks and 3D printing.
It’s essentially meant to be a huge robot construction worker capable of many different manufacturing processes.The system is said to use VLA (Vision-Language-Action) AI models to navigate the world.Just in time to populate our nightmares, Zyrex, or whole herds of Zyrexi, may soon populate the construction sites of the future.
RIC Robotics Founder Ziyou Xu states, “We’re not just building another robot—we’re engineering the future of construction.With Zyrex, we’re addressing the industry’s labor shortages with powerful robotics capable of performing skilled work at scale.If Tesla’s Optimus is the Ironman of the Avengers, then Zyrex is the Hulk—only this Hulk is orange and built to construct, not to smash buildings.” A Hulk to make buildings, how excellent.
The company hopes to keep costs below $1 million and lease the system for around $20,000 a month.Initially, they think that the robot will use its LIDAR and other sensors in tandem with building plans and people to train its AI models.Later on, the company hopes to achieve full autonomy of the Zyrex, which is built off of the RIC-PRIMUS and RIC-M1 Pro robots.
The company says that they have been used to print “two Walmart warehouse extensions—one in Tennessee and another in Alabama—with 200 more planned nationwide.” One of the warehouses was said to be completed in a single week, with significant cost savings.The Walmart projects were done in collaboration with Alquist 3D, but this is not mentioned in the press release.The vision is nice, of course: a catch-all robot for the myriad building tasks.
This is sure to get some investor hearts soaring in anticipation.And of course, if RIC Robotics makes this a reality, or even comes somewhere close, they will have a bright future.We know that mobile, autonomous robots will also be in high demand for disaster relief and military construction.
On those kinds of sites, where you could have just the robots in a closed-off area to do work while others sleep, implementation may come sooner rather than later.Meanwhile, a busy construction site with lots of terrain challenges and changes is harder for me to imagine.Many people run about all the time, and there are lots of vehicles, suppliers, guys coming to deliver windows, etc.
To me, that kind of an environment seems super challenging.Autonomous road navigation, in my mind, seems an easier task.And despite the tens of billions that have been poured into that for decades, it is taking much longer than expected.
The types of AI engineers and coders that RIC would need are also in super high demand at Waymo, other Google units, Zoox, Pony.AI, Aurora, and more.In general, AI people can now easily command salaries north of $500,000, with the salaries of top executives going upwards of $1.5 million.At Microsoft, the estimate for AI engineers currently stands at $150k to $250.The LIDAR people are also in high demand worldwide.
Many companies in industrial automation, along with car firms and defense firms, want the perfect candidates for RIC Robotics to work for them instead.In an all-out war for talent, RIC may struggle to hire and retain good people.If Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI think that they’re in a struggle for all the world’s information, then the money will fly and it will be hard to keep people.
I also can not find much about the company that it does not itself put out.I can’t find funding information or a lot of external data to back up the firm’s claims.RIC Robotics, RIC Tech, and RIC Technology are all bandied about as names for the firm as well.
It’s unclear how Xu went from business development manager of RIC Robotics to founder.The company is also now stating that it is based in Torrence, California but previous incarnations were based in Hong Kong.We have written extensively about 3D printed construction and are regularly in contact with many experts in the sector, and RIC just hasn’t come up.
If we look through previous press releases and LinkedIn posts, RIC´s robots are simple concrete pumps on Kuka arms.Adding mobility to the mix will be complex, but other firms have similar solutions on the market already.French firm Constructions 3D, for example, has had tractor and crane versions for a number of years now.
For RIC to go from its current arm on a box approach to a mobile “print as you go” robot—and an autonomous one at that—fills me with more incredulity, and to then en passant have it weld too, all done in 2026, is even more outlandish.And if you could do something like this soon, then why not make autonomous street sweeper vehicles, or something else that looks like a far simpler challenge? It is very difficult to prove that a company can in the future not do something they’ve said they can do.But, I have a lot of doubts about RIC´s claims here.
I really don’t think that they can make a credible prototype of this thing by the end of 2026.A concrete extruder on a wheelbase with two robot arms, sure.But, a semi-autonomous construction robot? No.
Also, the idea of having a robot that can extrude concrete and is also “capable of performing heavy-duty tasks such as material handling and delicate trades, including welding, assembling, trimming, carpentry, 3D printing, exterior finishing, and more,” is to me a fantasy in the near term.Sure, if you give someone billions, they could do something like this, or maybe just a few hundred million if they were frugal and experienced.But, that would be for a robot that could only do some of that.
Think of the dexterity required for carpentry, or the precision that they’d need for all of these operations; just making the right end effectors would be very complex.And if it is meant to be autonomous, it simply would not be possible now, unless someone took Waymo money and threw it at this idea.Also, if you’d need to put a DED arm on a robot, let’s say that this would weigh around 70 kilos.
Then the resulting robot arm would need to weigh around 700 kilos.Two of these arms, therefore, would be at least 1500 kilos, and the robot controller would weigh around 400 kilos.In combination with the arm that would have to support both arms, the thing would weigh more than 2500 kilos.
The current construction 3D printers, for example, weigh between 400 and 2700 kilos in total.These are mobile, but are meant to be parked for 3D printing.The idea of having a vehicle 6 meters tall and weighting over 2000 kilos moving all around while completing many tasks worries me a bit.
Also, current construction 3D printers have tracks, but the RIC is a wheeled vehicle.So let’s imagine a Ford F250 or F350 Super Duty, which could theoretically carry the weight we estimated; then the total weight would be around 6000 kilos, at least.And this is without the concrete pump.
Happily, we have analogous vehicles already: the popular Iveco Daily, and AD platforms, are around the same weight class and are sold in concrete pumping versions worldwide.An Iveco AD with a concrete pump here has a weight of around 16,700 kilos.Available used for $100,000, this would be a great donor vehicle for a similar project.
Given the weights we are talking about, however, and those four wheels, I can imagine that it would be difficult to maneuver this vehicle around a busy construction site.And with a 7 meter span carrying two robot arms, it seems like it wouldn’t fit many construction sites at all.Judging by the man on the rendering and comparing his size to the wheelbase, the vehicle would be 3.60 by 3.24 meters; that’s about the size of the Ford F350.
That seems like a large vehicle to have to maneuver around a site.Plus, American houses are large, and the average space between them can be 3 meters in an urban area and 9 to 30 meters in suburbia, with averages perhaps estimated at being 6 to 15 meters.That’s not a lot of room for a herd of F350 super duty sized robots to move around in.
Also, the Ford F350 Super Duty has six wheels, while this construction robot will have only four, which will make it difficult to trundle around a muddy construction site.And they will be supporting a six-meter-tall structure, in continuous motion, swaying all the time, with two robot arms swinging around…welding and doing carpentry work.Steadily? I really can’t see the precision and stability being possible now either.
I see no cheese, only holes.Now, eventually of course someone will build something like this.But, given that NASA isn’t capable of making anything close to this with autonomous capabilities, I don’t think this will be possible now.
Maybe eventually, large construction robots with versatile tools will become possible.But, autonomy is billions of dollars away, and a working prototype that can weld, 3D print, do carpentry, and more autonomously is something that I don’t expect we’ll be seeing in 2026.Is the idea something that is bound to happen eventually? Emphatically, yes.
I’m just not sure that this will be the firm that does it within the specified time frame.Subscribe to Our Email Newsletter Stay up-to-date on all the latest news from the 3D printing industry and receive information and offers from third party vendors.Print Services Upload your 3D Models and get them printed quickly and efficiently.
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