361–370 of 564 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. If you have heavy machinery available, why use bricks?
Bricks are good at demolition time, compared to poured concrete, and can be recycled. They also look kinda nice.
If I was building construction robots, I don't think I'd be aiming to replace skilled human crafstmen directly, but rather render them unecessary. Most likely that would mean robots in factories churning out standardised components that somehow let you build strong, aesthetic walls without bricks.
I've seen brick effects that get applied to flat walls, which seems like one solution to this if you want the look but not the expense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Tech is not always an improvement, but not due to the reason described in the comment above. His negative presentation obscures an obvious fact: lower prices create the miracle of accessibility - people who could have never afforded the previous generation can now afford the new one, and in some cases their lives are changed for the better. I know most of us here are snobs, but let's not forget that only the King of…
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…
I wonder if we can generalise the lost quality and attribute it to a lack of case by case application human ingenuity and experience that an experienced craftsman brings to the trade.
Or may be we can attribute the loss of aesthetics to the financial gain it brings. There is no free lunch, and somethings got to give to make gains elsewhere. And it is inevitable that when one of those two things is extreamly measurable (finance) and the other extremely un-measurable (aesthetics), the measurable thing always ultimately wins.
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…
Agreed. Bricks aren’t great for construction. Not structural, poor R-value, a ton of labor. Just have concrete poured or stick frame and a fake brick facade. Will probably last longer as well. Seems like the wrong problem to solve.
They are structural (in terms of compression, but have low tensile strength which is probably why they aren't popular in North America)
They have a good R-value
They are easy to work with
We are building a house right now, and the cheapest, quickest and easiest part so far has been building the walls. We are using clay blocks[0] which are R-10. Compared to other tasks no specialised equipment is needed, it's literally just manual labour. When you get to a corner or window, they can easily be cut with an angle grinder or even by hand (for a rougher finish). The house is two floors and the exterior walls for each floor took less than a week to build. It's quicker (building forms takes a long time), cheaper, better insulating and better for the environment than monolithic concrete.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__T8PWnntkU - Not this exact product, but this was the best explanation I could find in English.
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…
Which is still automation.
Robots in factories making cars still leave most of the "decision making part of the job for humans".
See, the size of the "decision making part of the job" matters...
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. Which is still automation. Robots in factories making cars still leave most of the "decision making part of the job for human…
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
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…