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Where are the robotic bricklayers?

constructionphysics.substack.com

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Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#251

Post by slacktide »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #89
cgrealy wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 as…

As a mechanical engineering intern in the early ‘90s, I worked for a company that among other things, designed food handling equipment for McD. For them a lot of automation is about safety - young/inexperienced employees around potentially dangerous equipment = workers comp claims. I helped develop a fully automated pushbutton system to change fryer oil out from a bulk storage/disposal system. They had a lot of burn claims from teenagers changing it manually back then.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#252

Post by pottertheotter »

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…

I find this comment so out of touch with the history of the world. Would you have us stuck back at the art of knocking rocks together to create fire since the people who created matches and lighters had so much contempt for the rock knockers? If anyone has contempt, it's this line of thought.

What are we if we aren't trying to move forward--solve problems, invent, and improve lives? A few weeks back I came across Hadrian, one of the machines profiled in this piece. The idea of building with higher accuracy, lower cost, greater speed, all while allowing people doing backbreaking labor to do something else, excited me. There was no contempt for anyone.

I like woodworking. I'm currently thinking of purchasing an industrial-grade CNC router. I think it's analogous to robotic bricklayers in many ways. I have to design a piece before I make it whether I cut it with a hand saw, use a table saw, or have the CNC router do it. The reason I use a table saw instead of a hand saw is the same for using a CNC router instead of a table saw--it's faster and provides me with a more consistent and accurate outcome.

If that's not a good enough justification, you should look into how much skill is required to operate a CNC router. You can use different bits, rpms of the router, speed the machine is moving at, entry speeds, depth of cuts, etc. There is a lot of skill involved. And when a lot of that is taken away so I can focus on what matters most--creating beautiful furniture--I'll be so very happy and won't feel the least bit bad about it.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#253

Post by sudosysgen »

bumby wrote: post #223
sudosysgen wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A big part of ML in robotics is actually making nearly 1:1 simulations of the world and the actuators. It's fairly sucessful. We can simulate for example driving a car really well. Simulating human behaviour is harder, but simulating brick laying is not that hard, we have the technology to do so already.

> We can simulate for example driving a car really well. Can you qualify this more specifically? In many domains (particularly safety critical ones) “reasonably well” may not be sufficient

Car simulators are accurate enough that F1 drivers drive more in simulators than in practice laps. They are very accurate. More than well enough to train a model to drive, for example, reasonably fast. Of course the real world is always different even if simply because the conditions are different, so you keep some headroom.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#254

Post by coding123 »

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…

Are we sure that the ML experts that wanted to beat real human chess players actually respected them? Wouldn't they know that at some point the enjoyment of chess itself might fade if the best in the world is a computer? Maybe chess is having a moment right now due to Netflix, perhaps maybe it's a permanent upswing. But long term, I don't know if it will remain interesting to people.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#255

Post by petra »

dragonwriter wrote: post #213
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 Every step in programming tooling since programs stopped being input as manual hardware configuration has been automation of programming, and its just made more work, and higher paying work, for programmers.

The main reason there's more programming work, is because machines are capable to do more(connectivity, mobility, ux, marketing, etc).

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#256

Post by akomtu »

ALittleLight wrote: post #189
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code has been getting automated since basically day one of programming. The funny thing about automation in programming - it has always opened up more doors - and led to more employment in programming. We are so far from anything that resembles real automated coding - that coding automation should continue to be celebrated by engineers for a long time. GitHub Co-Pilot and VS Code aren't going to replace you - they're…

Automated tools will lower the difficulty of coding to the point where it'll be easy to pick up and be massively productive. Developers will be replaced by domain experts becoming productive developers easily with automated tools.

Lowering difficulty of lifting boxes doesn't eliminate warehouse personnel: it means that now every worker can lift hundred of heavy boxes a day and the company can deliver 100x more stuff. Businesses don't want to get rid of personnel; they want to increase profit-per-employee and automation does just that.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#257

Post by coding123 »

caf wrote: post #220
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Code has been getting automated since basically day one of programming. The funny thing about automation in programming - it has always opened up more doors - and led to more employment in programming. We are so far from anything that resembles real automated coding - that coding automation should continue to be celebrated by engineers for a long time. GitHub Co-Pilot and VS Code aren't going to replace you - they're…

Right. A working automated bricklaying machine would be like a C compiler for brickmasons.

It doesn't perfectly translate IMHO. A bricklayer contractor that has a mostly automated machine doing 80% of the job would probably hire maybe 1 guy to get shit off the truck and clean dropped mortar. Normally he might have 2 or 3 extra guys to do some stretches or turns or something like that.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#258

Post by mdtusz »

petra wrote: post #255
dragonwriter wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are already starting to see automated programming moving out of the research lab and into the commercial realm Every step in programming tooling since programs stopped being input as manual hardware configuration has been automation of programming, and its just made more work, and higher paying work, for programmers.

The main reason there's more programming work, is because machines are capable to do more(connectivity, mobility, ux, marketing, etc).

What do you think enabled these things?

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#259

Post by d0gbread »

savanaly wrote: post #65
orev wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The price consumers pay for something has nothing to do with the cost of producing it. Not counting the cost of the land itself, an identical house built in the city costs the same in hours and materials as one in the country. Price is determined by one thing, and one thing only: how much other people are willing to pay for it (i.e. the market sets the prices). The costs vs sale price are relevant to the builder in m…

This is only true in the short run by the way. In the long run, in a competitive market, cost is absolutely the driver of price.

How is this true for generally appreciating assets like a house? It makes sense for commodities but until location and style don't matter I'm unconvinced there's a such thing as cost driving price in the housing market on any timeline.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#260

Post by coding123 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #132
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.

No one is even thinking about trying to completely automate coding. There's tons of "no code" solutions - but these are all just different versions of coding and programming languages - usually with GUIs and pictures instead of words. There's more than 60,000 SWEs that work in my company. Amazon, Google, Apple, and MSFT could make >$10Bn/year each if they could automate coding. The fact that none of them are even try…

No code still has a bit to go. It's main focus right now is having a model and can generate a UI and have a method to update a database. When you get into the weeds of what companies want, it's that person in group A is allowed to update, group B can create things, and group C can only view. And on top of that there is private stuff that only the same user can see. It's that shit that makes no-code a non-starter for Google, Amazon, ...

Perhaps a company that wants to display the current Bitcoin price on a screen and let you do currency conversions you can do that in "no code", but then again, a programmer can also do that with code in 15 minutes...

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