Robots move Shanghai city block [video]

I dont understand this. I always thought houses/buildings have underground supports on which the structure is erected. Doesn't have to be tall towers, all small buildings have underground support too.

How come these buildings don't have any of that? Or is the support in form of metal rods which these structures are freely screwed to?

I found this because I had a similar question, I think it might be hard to gauge how much prep work was done from the video.

https://parametric-architecture.com/shanghai-relocates-7500-...

The houses: https://shanghaistreetstories.com/?page_id=1288

It looks like the building was constructed on a concrete slab foundation. The slab is poured in the ground, but not anchored into it. When it's time to move it, you dig under the slab to put in jacks to raise it off of the ground underneath the slab. These jacks also can move it a bit at a time.

For smaller buildings, you might jack it up, and put wheels under it to move it. For smaller buildings on perimeter foundation, you might unbolt it from the foundation to move it, and attach it to a newly poured foundation at the new location.

Repairing a sinking foundation is similar... Dig under, lift up as needed, fill in under the sinking areas, hopefully with something more stable.

Much taller buildings need deeper anchoring. Small buildings on sites with difficult soil conditions need deeper anchoring too.

And how did they get the robotic legs under there in the first place? Once they're in place the walking is cool, but that seems like the less impressive part.

From the video, it seems like the houses were cut from the original foundation and a huge blocks of concrete was formed underneath the houses. Before pouring the concrete, they dug under the houses and inserted metal framework for the move, that was likely how they lifted the whole thing to insert the jacks later on. The process of doing this seems way more interesting to me than the final move with these synchronized jacks. I'd love more details about that

I wish that they showed that part too, the synchronized robo-jacks are interesting but the first part seems more challenging.

I just walked passed, it seems they cut the foundation and somehow poured a new one underneath? Here are some pics: https://ibb.co/yttQQhJ https://ibb.co/KxbM6cnY

Search youtube for "crawl space underpinning" for some videos of a residential process.

I'm sure they're doing something more elaborate there, but in residential you do this underpinning technique if you want to replace or extend your foundation (in my case, putting a basement where there is a crawl space), where you mark the foundation into 2' segments and label them A, B, C. Then you go through and dig/cut out all the "A"s, and pour footings and foundations in place, then repeat for the Bs and Cs. I'm thinking about doing this for my crawl space just to have some more space for storage.