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Where are the robotic bricklayers?

constructionphysics.substack.com

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Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#321

Post by TeMPOraL »

gorgoiler wrote: post #286
TeMPOraL wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I would be interested to know if there is feedback in the McD process chemistry loop. A fun part of cooking by hand is dealing with the quirks of fresh produce. These once-living plants and meats are inconsistent enough to require decisions on the fly, mid cook. One cut is 50g thicker at one end than the other, one parsnip is 10% more dense at the top, this cod retained more salt than yesterday and requires less seas…

> I would be interested to know if there is feedback in the McD process chemistry loop.

There must be, running an open-loop process is rather tricky. If it's like any other process in food manufacturing, there are likely both continuous automated checks of trivially measurable properties and regular (every hour or less) manual lab tests[0].

> These once-living plants and meats are inconsistent enough to require decisions on the fly, mid cook.

As I understand their process (from what little I read and watched about it in the past), the keystone of it is minimizing input variance at every stage. They stick to specific varieties of potatoes, they keep bun production centralized, they place specific requirements on slaughterhouses for the meat they then blend into standardized pulp, etc. This makes it possible to constrain variance downstream - e.g. the meat pulp has roughly uniform properties, so it can be shaped and processed in tightly controlled fashion.

At the end come pre-processed food pieces that are then shipped to restaurants for assembly. McDonald's venues don't really cook this food, they put it through the last stage of processing pipeline - heating it in programmable ovens/fryers. Restaurant workers aren't making any cooking decisions. That's how McDonald's ensures its product consistency - there's no place left for a human to screw things up.

--

[0] - Industrial food processing plants have labs on-site, which receive samples from the production line on an ongoing basis. This is used to check the batches for contamination / pathogens, verify measurements from automated sensors, and to provide ground-truth data for models used in model predictive controllers, if such are used in the process.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#322

Post by lifeisstillgood »

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…

This is just an example of not enough software has been written to handle all the edge cases, and/or not enough has been done to the field to turn it into a factory (groundworks not level etc)

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#323

Post by cudgy »

eloisius wrote: post #298
octokatt wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d add to the list of why partial automation isn’t worth it: it’s more satisfying to build a brick wall than babysit a bricklaying machine. Doing the physical labor is difficult. My father was a bricklayer from ten to fifty, when he finally had to stop working. But he loved showing me the buildings he built. He helped build city government buildings, schools, libraries. The pride he felt, that he’d built something w…

My dad was a stair builder his whole career until finally becoming a freelance carpenter after getting laid off. Stairs, like bricks, are probably another implement that us techies use daily with absolutely no appreciation for complexity and skill involved. Spiral staircases are an incredible work of craftsmanship, or at least they were. I used to go to the shop with my dad when I was a kid. They would rig up these b…

Nice story. Tech is not always an improvement. In fact, the more years I live, the less enamored with tech I’ve become due to many examples like this.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#324

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

function_seven wrote: post #146
dragonsky67 wrote: post #130

The question I would have around automated building construction is "why use bricks?". Bricks are great for humans to build with, they are just the right size and weight for the human hand to manipulate and place. They are not optimised for machine manipulation. I would guess that if you wanted to automate construction you would start by making things like walls on an automated production line, then ship the largest…

Because they’re pleasant to look at. Half the time, the wall isn’t even “needed”, other than for aesthetic purposes. Whenever a wall is purely functional, it’s almost never made of small clay bricks today. I’m talking about foundation walls, subsurface retaining walls, and similar things. The types of walls that aren’t meant to be looked at, but instead meant to hold something back or up. Whenever you see a wall bein…

> Because they’re pleasant to look at.

I expect that this is less a case of "bricks have long been used because they’re pleasant to look at", and more a case of "Bricks are considered pleasant to look at, because they have long been used, and have that old-timey feeling"

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#325

Post by onion2k »

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #320
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…

Exactly. If you need an expert to constantly babysit the machine then you may as well dispense with the machine and have the expert build the wall themselves.

That's only true if the machine builds walls at the same speed as a person and the person can only babysit one machine at a time. If the machine is 10 times faster, or the person can babysit 10 machines, then you've reduced your labor costs by 90% or your output by 1000%.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#326

Post by saberdancer »

oldsecondhand wrote: post #311
NonContro wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm planning to build a house, and it has surprised me that standardised house plans are not readily available online - particularly for European weather conditions - the emphasis is instead on custom floorplans. Creating new designs millions of times over seems like an obvious inefficiency.

In Hungary we had house templates since the socialism. (following sites are in Hungarian) https://kulcsrakesz.hu/tipushazak/ https://hellohaz.hu/tipushazak/ https://www.leier.hu/tipushazak

These are prefab houses. They are built in factory and then pieced together on site. What the poster was asking for was free/cheap plans to build a house, without support.

Kind of like open source design of a house.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#327

Post by darkwater »

version_five wrote: post #90
mavhc wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

> 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.

This is a pipe dream of white collar who never did any actual, real, physical job for a very prolonged time. It's not like going to the gym for free or doing just the right amount of sport. It's something that stresses your joints and your muscles day in day out. Obviously you will partly get used to it and be "more fit" than a white collar but you will also develop back pain and joints pain.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#328

Post by jillesvangurp »

empiricus wrote: post #315

For my new house, laying the bricks (aerated concrete blocks actually) took 2 days. The rest of the house took more than one year to finish. Not really necessary to optimize this step in many cases.

Yep, that's the real issue. It optimizes one of the less expensive steps in the construction process; therefore the savings are not significant enough to matter much.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#329

Post by guerrilla »

ben_bai wrote: post #313

The robotic bricklayers are in the factories. They do construct prefab elements that then get hauled to the building site to be quickly assembled. Usually it's done with wood but there are also factories that build prefab houses with bricks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJIDjdFTVW8

So, I don't understand how this can be cheaper. I just saw a neighbor put together a house out of large bricks with six guys in two days. Doing the same using this method seems like it would have been more expensive. Is this an economies-of-scale thing or what?

Edit: Here's a second video [1] where they use concrete. It says that factory can makes enough for 60 houses per year. It also says, at the end, that it's not cheaper but faster and "easier on the nerves" for the builders.

1. https://youtu.be/CBZYwI3BJ9E

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#330

Post by Gibbon1 »

empiricus wrote: post #315

For my new house, laying the bricks (aerated concrete blocks actually) took 2 days. The rest of the house took more than one year to finish. Not really necessary to optimize this step in many cases.

I think about that every time I see yet another article on 3d printing houses.

My parents added a bedroom to a stick framed house. The floor joists took a weekend. Nailing together and erecting walls took one weekend. Framing the roof, another weekend. That was my dad, mom, brother and I. And we used a skill saw, hammers and nails.

I think the issue is each task of itself is fairly optimized. Yet there are a large number of them to do. And a problem is automation generally requires tight tight tolerances or you're back to hand fitting everything. For instance with molding a skilled tradesman will just install it without any detailed plans. Working around any small variation won't slow him down at all.

Another issue I see is lot of focus on single family. Gut feeling is mass produced single family is a dying industry in the west.

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