But construction sites are not ideal environments for high-tech kit.  They are dirty, messy, and full of unpredictable things - humans, vehicles, and the weather.  So in the short term at least, robots may make their biggest contribution away from the construction site itself. 

The top floors of the DFAB House were built by two robots which never went outdoors.  Mounted on the ceilings of a large factory space, they worked together to cut, drill and position the wooden members of the frame, and they were delivered by truck. 

This form of building, now known as “off-site” or “modular” construction is becoming far more widespread.  Once known as “prefabricated building”, it was associated with poor quality, cheaply constructed buildings, such as those built in the UK to house people made homeless after World War Two. 

But prefab is making a comeback across the world.  In Singapore, the government hopes to have a third of new homes built by the government’s Housing and Development Board made with prefabricated units, in a bid to increase construction productivity by 25%. 

Rooms are constructed precisely out of concrete in factories, painted, wall covers and floorings applied, and windows and bathrooms fitted, before being assembled into buildings on site. 

But prefabrication is not just a way to make boring grey apartments a bit cheaper.  Disruptive companies are using it as way to deliver new buildings to the highest design and environmental standards at affordable prices. 

In Reno, Nevada, Ukrainian-born Maxim Gerbut’s firm PassivDom is updating the concept of prefabrication for the 21st Century. 

Manufactured out of plastic composites using its own 3D printing technology, its mobile houses are 36 sq m (387 sq ft) in area, and exceed the most exacting standards of energy efficiency, called “Passivhaus”.  This enables them to stay heated and lit by solar panels alone, with no connection to the grid. 

Mr Gerbut jokingly calls it the “zombie-proof house”, as so little heat or sound escapes that undead monsters who rely on those senses to find prey would have no idea that anyone was inside. 

And prefabrication will make it possible to build them relatively cheaply, in places far from mains power and water, where construction labour would be tough to find.