# Bouygues Construction tests Walter bricklaying robot: up to 60 m² of wall per day on a test site

- Published: 2026-11-08 17:24 UTC
- Section: Machines & Making › Construction
- Tags: bricklaying robot, Walter robot, Bouygues Construction, Scale One test platform, construction robotics, adhesive foam instead of mortar, Wienerberger, KM Robotics, robot masonry France
- URL: https://realtech.media/news/rt-a920ccfb6db2c93ecfa3ac45_bouygues_construction_tests/

**Walter, built by Wienerberger and KM Robotics, laid up to 10 m² of wall per hour in Bouygues trials with foam adhesive and no scaffolding. First real sites are planned for 2027.**

Bouygues Construction tested the Austrian bricklaying robot Walter at the end of 2026 at its Chilly-Mazarin test platform south of Paris. According to Infobae, cited by science-et-vie.com, the machine can build up to 60 square metres of wall per day [1]. It applies an adhesive foam instead of mortar. Bouygues plans to bring it to its first real French sites in early 2027 [1].

## Trials at the Scale One platform

The demonstration lasted one week at Scale One, a test bed for construction-site robotics that Bouygues opened in October 2026 in the Essonne department. It was not a real building site but a full-scale experimental platform. There the articulated arm built walls 19 to 30 centimetres thick and up to 3.5 metres high, with no scaffolding [1].

At cruising pace the machine lays 5 to 6 square metres of wall per hour, with peaks of 10, which comes to about 60 over a full day. It works to the millimetre, day and night, without breaks. Below 1.5 metres a human mason is still faster; above that height the robot is clearly ahead [1].

## Digital model, foam and rental

The machine receives a digital model of the wall, calculates the position of each brick and adjusts its dimensions. A laser and a set of sensors guide it along the structure, and it detects defects in a block before placing it. The adhesive is a dry foam, deposited in two beads on special "robot-ready" bricks. Unlike houses made by 3D printing, the walls remain standard terracotta brick [1].

The machine is heavy and bulky, and is cost-effective only on large, straight surfaces such as warehouses or apartment buildings [1].

The makers, Austria's Wienerberger and the Czech startup KM Robotics, do not sell the robot. They rent it with an operator and bill per square metre of masonry. One machine does the work of four to five masons at a cost close to human labour, but in less time [1].

Walter has been in development since 2021 and has laid more than 55,000 square metres of wall on about a dozen European sites, from the Czech Republic to the United Kingdom. In Hungary it built the shell of a 100-square-metre house in under three days. The mason's role changes to that of an operator who controls the machine from a tablet [1].

## Sources

1. [science-et-vie.com](https://www.science-et-vie.com/technos-et-futur/la-france-teste-un-robot-macon-capable-de-construire-60-metres-carres-de-mur-en-une-journee-il-pourrait-arriver-sur-les-chantiers-en-2027-265635.html)

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Source: RealTech, realtech.media — https://realtech.media/news/rt-a920ccfb6db2c93ecfa3ac45_bouygues_construction_tests/