Where are the robotic bricklayers? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#391

Post by Hendrikto » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:15 AM UTC

VBprogrammer wrote: post #372

brnt wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, but houses are rarely like a serial manufactured car. But aren't many of them? May be country specific, but in the one I currently reside there are tons of neighbourhoods that were built at once, 1000 homes+. In the US I've seen areas like that too. I can easily imagine a robot puts down the basics, and the individual tweaking is done later by hand.

For me this feels like robotics operating at the wrong layer of abstraction. It's like those old tomorrow's world programs where they show the robotic helper diligently sweeping the floor with a grass broom. In car manufacturing robots are used to bolt and weld together stamped metal panels, this feels more like someone designing a robot which would be given a flat sheet of metal and using hammer and dollies forming…

Have you seen the concrete 3D printers? They printed weird looking houses with them. Very nifty. There are even people living in them.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#392

Post by quietbritishjim » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:17 AM UTC

cudgy wrote: post #346

Gibbon1 wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nu…

Why? Isn’t most of the West one of the the least densely populated areas in the United States? Seems there would be lots of land to build single family homes.

Wow that is an incredibly US-centric view even by HN standards. They meant the western world, not the West in the USA. Try Googling "the west" and look at the top results.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#393

Post by toyg » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:18 AM UTC

forcry wrote: post #365

eloisius wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sadly this is a global phenomenon. The same thing can be seen in, for example, movie/music industry as well. And we have to assume that the same holds in other fields as well.. 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 fi…

> may be we can attribute the loss of aesthetics to the financial gain it brings.

That's an element, but another big element is specialist-subject education.

If you are an old-money guy, you can spend your life figuring out the best attributes of everything around you, and pursuing excellence in what you own. Your parents and grandparents can educate you in what a great staircase looks like, and you can spend weeks going from shop to shop until you find the right thing, or hire a carpenter to make it for however long it takes to be "just so".

If you are somebody who's just made their money, and maybe are still neck-deep into the rat race, you don't know anything about staircases and you have no time, nor contacts, to educate yourself on what it should look like. Developer shows you the staircase, it looks alright, sold.

More and more people are chained to their day job for longer and longer. More and more people are coming up in the world and buying stuff they don't know anything about, enriching companies targeting the mass-market more than specialist ones. This is nothing new: in the XX century we've seen this happening for anything from clothes to cutlery. In a way, it's a good thing: objects become more and more efficient and functional, eschewing aesthetic values that are somewhat irrational and often just classist. It's true, though, that we lose a cultural element.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#394

Post by MillenialMan » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:19 AM UTC

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…

I don't really understand this. When I see a small house being built, it will have four or five builders on-site at all times, mostly doing labour (and they're, frankly, extremely slow. It will take months to lay the bricks). If you still need the decisions, can't you cut that down to one, or maybe two? That strikes me as a dramatic reduction in labour cost.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#395

Post by eloisius » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:21 AM UTC

forcry wrote: post #365

eloisius wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sadly this is a global phenomenon. The same thing can be seen in, for example, movie/music industry as well. And we have to assume that the same holds in other fields as well.. 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 fi…

I'd love to see a study done on this. What you you wrote made me think of Phaedrus slowly losing his mind trying to define quality in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Quality goods are still available, even if they are buried in the marketplace of cheap disposable goods and hard to find amongst all the noise of advertising and sponsored content.

What worries me more is the receding availability of _quality work to be done_. If you've ever worked with tools and materials, I mean physical ones, you know. It's among the most satisfying experiences in the world to feel the sensation of being good at (and becoming better at) something through practice. To be able to select the materials you use and discern their quality. To feel a familiar and trusted tool manipulating the materials to produce something. Those things are innately pleasurable.

McJob robot babysitters that only intercede when the machine screws up, overseeing the production of low-but-acceptable-quality products at a predictable pace is, in my mind, a dystopia. Getting a Bricklayerbot 2000 unstuck a few times per hour is not the kind of skill I can imagine being pleasurable to hone. There's a very low ceiling on the craftsmanship there.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#396

Post by hippari » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:21 AM UTC

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #389

atoav wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but houses are rarely like a serial manufactured car. Sometimes you have to lay down every row of bricks differently with a ton of unplanned (or unplannable) things to account for, because the electrician might work while you lay your brick etc. Not that you cannot automate whole houses and sell them off the shelve for cheap (see prefabs), it just isn't something that could be done at a site where your brickbot…

In my country houses are build in factories and then assembled on site. You rarely build a single house you build an entire neighbourhood in one go.

You rarely get to build a new neighbourhood here, often it's renovation work done on already built areas. Building a whole new block all the time is simply unsustainable.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#397

Post by mypalmike » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:23 AM UTC

oblio wrote: post #357

NoPicklez wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just want to iterate that working an office job also carries with it its own health problems. Low physical activity from sitting all day, forward posture from sitting all day, RSI from typing and mouse movement, eye problems, overwork (Arguably more than labor jobs).

All of those are super low risk compared to having your hand chopped off by something or a ton of bricks falling on your head.

In addition, office workers have the option of engaging in exercise during their off time to compensate for the sedentary aspect of desk work.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#398

Post by MillenialMan » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:23 AM UTC

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.

People already have the option to not lay bricks. They don't choose it, because they need money.

I get that everyone is going to say, "well then, UBI" but bear in mind in an automated society, power is disproportionately in the hands of the people who own the machines, and they're unlikely to part with their wealth voluntarily.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#399

Post by MomoXenosaga » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:23 AM UTC

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…

My brother lives in an apartment building from the 1930s made of bricks. It is absolutely horrendous.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#400

Post by imtringued » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:25 AM UTC

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #324

function_seven wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I don't think so. I see a lot of buildings that are 30 years old and they look ugly because they don't have any complexity in their facade, just a single color of paint. Bricks add natural complexity to a facade. You can make a single color building look nice by adding details.