Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Where are the robotic bricklayers?

constructionphysics.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 564 posts

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#81

Post by michaelt »

yarg wrote: post #8

There's no need for robotic brick layers - it's requires significantly less dexterity to just 3D print a house, and it allows for shapes and contours that are simply impossible to construct from bricks.

We've had the technology to make arbitrary shapes quickly and cheaply for decades: poured concrete.

The problems with new building tech are twofold:

First of all, for most people a house is the biggest investment they'll ever make, so they're not really keen to gamble. Oh, they'll make minor gambles - but a complete new way of building houses is a tough sell.

Second of all, building a house involves so many different costs that even a big saving in one area is only a drop in the ocean on the total project cost. If I'm building a brick-and-block house, the total cost of materials and labour might be $180,000 with brickwork comprising 10% of that. That's nothing to be sniffed at - but no matter how great and cheap your brickwork replacement is, someone taking a risk and using your new tech can't possible save more than 10%.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#82

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

bsder wrote: post #64
egh wrote: post #28

The great contempt that computer people have for the skills that every human brings to the jobs that the do is always on display here. We haven't automated driving; we haven't automated picking tomatoes; we haven't automated bricklaying; we can't automate cooking a fucking hamburger. But they are completely convinced that it's just around the corner, because they are full of contempt for the skill and intelligence of…

People also seem to always miss that we always engineer the product in order to be able to automate it. The most automated things have been designed by engineers with robotic assembly in mind .

> [mortor] it’s a non-newtonian fluid, and it’s viscosity increases when it’s moved or shaken.

Which is why the points about non-Newtonian fluids like mortor changing viscosity seems right on the money. Anyone trying automation with normal mortor gives me zero confidence. I like the robot truck idea, seems like a winner compared to others.

Exo suits / better humans in the meantime, purpose built machines later.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#83

Post by narag »

colordrops wrote: post #62
egh wrote: post #28

The great contempt that computer people have for the skills that every human brings to the jobs that the do is always on display here. We haven't automated driving; we haven't automated picking tomatoes; we haven't automated bricklaying; we can't automate cooking a fucking hamburger. But they are completely convinced that it's just around the corner, because they are full of contempt for the skill and intelligence of…

Having respect for the skills of a worker and also believing that they are possible to automate are not mutually exclusive. It's no different from people saying the same thing about chess and chess players, or go and go players, before the problem was solved. And it's not just blue collar workers that are a target of this idea. We are already starting to see automated programming moving out of the research lab and in…

It's no different from people saying the same thing about chess and chess players, or go and go players...

Well, car assembling plants are older than Deep Blue, IIRC and they are very complex and "very robotic" in a physical sense.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#84

Post by soheil »

egh wrote: post #28

The great contempt that computer people have for the skills that every human brings to the jobs that the do is always on display here. We haven't automated driving; we haven't automated picking tomatoes; we haven't automated bricklaying; we can't automate cooking a fucking hamburger. But they are completely convinced that it's just around the corner, because they are full of contempt for the skill and intelligence of…

Why not both? You make it sound like only as long as we don't have an automated hamburger maker we should respect the people who cook our hamburgers, but not afterwards. Progress in any field is usually a function of amount of money poured into it, if the margins for hamburgers were large enough, ie. no cheap labor or higher food prices we would have invested more engineering effort into making smart enough robots that make hamburgers and probably by now have them being made automatically.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#85

Post by chias »

egh wrote: post #28

The great contempt that computer people have for the skills that every human brings to the jobs that the do is always on display here. We haven't automated driving; we haven't automated picking tomatoes; we haven't automated bricklaying; we can't automate cooking a fucking hamburger. But they are completely convinced that it's just around the corner, because they are full of contempt for the skill and intelligence of…

Laying brick is hard. I bricked up a small gap in a two-foot-tall brick wall in my back yard recently. It took me literally all day, and looks exactly as messy as someone who lays bricks might expect from someone who uses a computer for a living.

Watching those people on youtube who make tutorial videos that go super fast and make it look really easy... You can record yourself writing a python script and make it look easy. Those people are pros, and have skills and experience to back it up. It isn't easy.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#86

Post by paxys »

spyckie2 wrote: post #31

The value of work is not in the work done; it's in the decisions being made. It's the ability to handle edge cases, to work your way through ambiguity, to "unstuck" a stuck situation, and to resolve tricky unforeseen issues. If you build a robot that only handles the main workflow and can't handle any of the exceptions, you're not automating anything; you're building a convenience tool. Basically, you're removing som…

> If you build a robot that only handles the main workflow and can't handle any of the exceptions, you're not automating anything; you're building a convenience tool. Basically, you're removing some of the labor part of the job, but still keeping the decision making part of the job for humans.

You are wayyy underselling the importance of convenience tools. Even without working out edge cases you can reduce a workforce of 100 people to 95 robots and 5 supervisors/decision makers.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#87

Post by willbw »

colordrops wrote: post #62
egh wrote: post #28

The great contempt that computer people have for the skills that every human brings to the jobs that the do is always on display here. We haven't automated driving; we haven't automated picking tomatoes; we haven't automated bricklaying; we can't automate cooking a fucking hamburger. But they are completely convinced that it's just around the corner, because they are full of contempt for the skill and intelligence of…

Having respect for the skills of a worker and also believing that they are possible to automate are not mutually exclusive. It's no different from people saying the same thing about chess and chess players, or go and go players, before the problem was solved. And it's not just blue collar workers that are a target of this idea. We are already starting to see automated programming moving out of the research lab and in…

I think it is different from people saying we couldn't automate chess or go. The difference is between a purely data domain, chess or go, where it can both be translated 1-1 into a computer simulation of the game AND the inputs are data.

I realise that you could define everything as data - laying a brick, you take the inputs of where to position the brick, etc. However I think we can make the distinction between chess where the data is "Pawn is on e4" and the much greater complexity of the real world where we are dealing with billions of atoms. Perhaps not everyone agrees with me.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#89

Post by TeMPOraL »

cgrealy wrote: post #76
egh wrote: post #28

The great contempt that computer people have for the skills that every human brings to the jobs that the do is always on display here. We haven't automated driving; we haven't automated picking tomatoes; we haven't automated bricklaying; we can't automate cooking a fucking hamburger. But they are completely convinced that it's just around the corner, because they are full of contempt for the skill and intelligence of…

> We haven't automated driving Yeah, we pretty much have... it just hasn't been widely adopted yet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjztvddhZmI And honestly, from a business perspective, most people really don't care about the skills ordinary people have. Look at the wine industry for example. Top shelf wine is hand-picked, for exactly the reasons you outline, and some people are willing to pay top dollar for that en…

> We absolutely can automate cooking a fucking hamburger, and as soon as it's cheaper than the cheapest labour, McDonald's, Burger King, etc, WILL automate cooking a fucking hamburger.

Curiously, McDonald's is probably as close as you can get to automating burgers and fries without crossing that final step of removing human labor entirely. It's not really cooking anymore, it's process chemistry[0], with some final assembly required.

--

[0] - Which I actually consider to be a good thing.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#90

Post by version_five »

mavhc wrote: post #44
spyckie2 wrote: post #31

The value of work is not in the work done; it's in the decisions being made. It's the ability to handle edge cases, to work your way through ambiguity, to "unstuck" a stuck situation, and to resolve tricky unforeseen issues. If you build a robot that only handles the main workflow and can't handle any of the exceptions, you're not automating anything; you're building a convenience tool. Basically, you're removing som…

Not destroying your body lifting heavy weights for 50 years seems like something people might like. We automated looking after the house after it's been built, no need for people scrubbing floors and clothes any more, freed up 40% of the workforce. My partially automated vacuum cleaner, clothes washer, dish washer, food cooker, water heater, all work well.

Most construction relies on fit young men to do the "heavy lifting". It would be interesting to see how the dynamics changesd if technology moved the needle on the brawn->brain scale, so that the core value prop of a construction worker was not their fitness. I'm not convinced it would be for the better.

Also just want to add that working in a physical job for 50 years is much better for your body than sitting at a desk for 50 years.

Post reply on HN