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Where are the robotic bricklayers?

constructionphysics.substack.com

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Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#151

Post by Grakel »

Overton-Window wrote: post #111
Grakel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Programming will be automated long before brick laying. We can barely print a document with confidence.

Programming is the conversion of ambiguous human requirements into machine readable instructions. To automate, computers would need to understand ambiguous human requirements. This is AGI. By comparison, brick laying is trivial.

Mix mortar to the consistency of mashed potatoes and apply gently but thoroughly to two faces of a heavy, but brittle object, then place that brick into a corner with both faces with applied mortar of even thickness touching receiving faces at the same time, no lateral sliding. Press the brick gently into the corner and tap, making sure that it lines up perfectly vertically with a string line and horizontally with the other bricks, then wipe off excess mortar, creating a visually appealing groove, all while standing on a muddy slope. Best of luck, robots.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#152

Post by aaron695 »

scotty79 wrote: post #56
aaron695 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This should be required reading for probably anyone who votes. This quote is my take away - "Almost every advancement in construction is small enough for a man to carry"

Not quite. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau

Looking at the documentation on those -

"Industrialized Building In the Soviet Union" (1969) - "Panels and slabs average 5 tons up to a maximum of 10 tons. Transportation is considered within economic limits if factory to job site is no more than 150 kilometres"

Which is what the original article says on pre-fab -

"Because of transportation costs, they are all limited to selling within a few hundred miles of their factory."

They were also considered disposable in the USSR, and no one wants to live in them. Also talked about in the article, it's a good article give it a read.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#153

Post by munk-a »

heavyset_go wrote: post #135
munk-a wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This plays exactly into the OP's comment - but if that is your sincerely held belief there are ~4,000 bricklayers~[1] in America today and you could make a whole boatload of money if you could automate their work. 1. According to the BLS link below it's actually closer to 50,000.

> there are 4,000 bricklayers in America today There are over 50,000 bricklayers in the US according to the BLS[1]. [1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes472021.htm

Oh sorry - google apparently failed me - thanks for the correction!

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#154

Post by Animats »

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

It's time to link to the AMFare video again.[1]

This was done 50 years ago, but wasn't cost-effective.

Country Garden in Beijing has several automated restaurants. They have 6 restaurants on this system now, one of which seats 600 people. So at scale, this is starting to work. Maybe. Looking at the videos, it looks hard to clean. Commercial food processing equipment has a look of "can be blasted with boiling soapy water daily", and not seeing that here.[2]

[1] https://youtu.be/FmXLqImT1wE

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1GipbISX54

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#155

Post by rowanG077 »

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…

You must interpret everything people say in the worst possible way to have this viewpoint.

Besides that It's not my experience at all that "computer people" think that these things will be automated in a short time frame. It's the opposite. The "computer people" are highly skeptic because they know much better then anyone what a computer is capable of. It's almost always the managers and marketing people parading automation around.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#156

Post by h0l0cube »

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…

> We are already starting to see automated programming moving out of the research lab and into the commercial realm, e.g. GitHub copilot.

As soon as GitHub was acquired by Microsoft I knew their intentions were for automated coding tools. I wasn't concerned about this affecting my livelihood in the short to medium term, because state-of-the-art ANNs won't be able to grasp the context of business requirements without developing adult human level intelligence. Thus, even a full program built by such a system would need to be verified by a human to be sure it will behave as desired, obviating any gain in terms of automation. Even the rudimentary boilerplate that copilot spits out suffers from this problem.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#157

Post by Nasrudith »

cratermoon wrote: post #106
pradeep_m wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a rather harsh take. Most of the people working on automating it understand how hard it is and are striving through it. You need some of these irrational believers for progress!

Robots that can identify and pick up things in the environment haven't materially improved since the 60s. What has changed is how factories and warehouses are built, so that the 'environment' and the 'things' are strictly constrained to enable robotic arms to grab and move them. But let one thing get a little out of place, or worse, let a human get between an industrial robot and the thing it's trying to pick up and.…

That simply isn't true - the machines of the past were pretty much blind but safety interlocks are able to detect an approach. The reason for the constraints are efficency in manufacturing is preferrably reducing the process to simple repetitive actions for improved throughput and reliability.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#158

Post by Nasrudith »

drivingmenuts wrote: post #150
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…

How much does a bricklaying system cost vs the cost of a human? Seems to me that humans are just way cheaper and lower maintenance.

It isn't the cost of one human vs one machine - that is a harder point to get to. Instead it is about the number of humans and their cost vs the machine adjusted equivalent. Scale is where industry takes its crown.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#159

Post by ehnto »

h0l0cube wrote: post #156
colordrops wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We are already starting to see automated programming moving out of the research lab and into the commercial realm, e.g. GitHub copilot. As soon as GitHub was acquired by Microsoft I knew their intentions were for automated coding tools. I wasn't concerned about this affecting my livelihood in the short to medium term, because state-of-the-art ANNs won't be able to grasp the context of business requirements without…

I started thinking about how you might automate game development, and I think it's a pretty good thought excercise on the topic.

I feel like the end result is just what we already have, game engines with visual programming and drag and drop editors. You don't add much value by automating the programming since you still have to define the input and outcome.

The real win was building the complex logic and state editor into a good UX.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#160

Post by ghaff »

Permit wrote: post #32
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…

> But they are completely convinced that it's just around the corner, because they are full of contempt for the skill and intelligence of ordinary people. Can you think of any other reasons that people might believe something like automated driving is right around the corner? Or is "contempt for the skill and intelligence of ordinary people" the only reason one might believe this?

You can phrase it more nicely. But it boils down to things like: "How hard can it be?" "Humans suck at it (though they really don't)" "We do great at 90% of the problem" and so forth.

Computers can do really well in controlled, specced situations. Not so well in a complicated environment where humans live and operate.

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