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Where are the robotic bricklayers?

constructionphysics.substack.com

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Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#451

Post by oriolid »

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.

I'd rather live in a house without undefined behavior.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#452

Post by Closi »

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"

This is the reason for a lot of design trends - This morning I have been:

* On a laminate wooden desk, in a room with laminate wooden floor (The same logic - neither are real wood, just an old-timey construction).

* Wearing a knitted jumper (which again could be considered stylish from an old-timey perspective, as the manufacturing could have used less thin cotton, but thick cotton is supposed to make it look hand woven)

* In a office which has LED lights hanging down which are designed to look like exposed old lightbulbs (same logic)

* While typing email on my laptop (the logo to which is an envelope, arguably to remind you of the old-timey mail system).

Heck, even my headphones have some fake leather on them, which is effectively just a fake material just to look like older materials which are actually less soft, and my coat has some fluff that is designed to make it look like coats used to look like when they were made from animal fur (even though, now, that is considered abhorrent, fake fur is still a thing, everyone just knows it's simulating the old material for whatever reason, because that was the old style).

So I think design trends in general come from historic use-cases in the context.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#453

Post by dolmen »

nashashmi wrote: post #35

Probably the biggest problem in automating construction is not just that every job is in a different location but these materials are so bulky and heavy and composite that the cost is not in the labor of installation but moving the materials to location. Asphalt paving requires 4 guys to level the asphalt but a truck to pour it. The best you can get is an attachment on the truck to level the asphalt. This attachment…

If there is no need for precision at scale, there is no need for automation.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#454

Post by iso1631 »

cseleborg wrote: post #340
cudgy wrote: post #323

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.

Couldn't agree more. The smartphone enabled a few very unique scenarios, like car sharing, and made everything else worse. It didn't use to be the case that you had to enter a PIN code, resist distraction from half a dozen notifications and hope you had got the power management right the night before when you wanted to read the morning news, but now that's the norm, just to give one example.

I don't have notifications, my phone has a fingerprint reader, and I get the news from the radio which turns on at 7am anyway. It might be the norm for you, but it doesn't have to be. Turn off your phone and charge it in the kitchen.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#455

Post by mauvehaus »

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…

There are, on the other hand, ways to combine the old and the new harmoniously. I'm building a cabinet on stand, and because there are drawers behind a door, the pulls need to be inset.

Carving the undercut by hand is pretty time consuming (i.e. unprofitable). But I have access to a CNC router. I laid out a template in FreeCad, and cut it out. Using template bushings and an edge fluting bit with the bearing boss ground off, I can cut the pulls with the undercut in a couple minutes each. And they come out more regular than doing them by hand.

I'll admit that I'm not much of a carver, but I don't think I could get the time per pull down anywhere near that while maintaining the same consistency even with a lot of practice.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#456

Post by throwaway0a5e »

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…

Three dudes can do the bulk of a cinder-block foundation in a few workdays with no special equipment. Blocks and bricks are cheap to work with because there are no special material handling requirements to increase overhead costs. This approach is economically viable pretty much everywhere except the urban areas most heavily represented on HN.

When you get into fancy high dollar construction in HCOL areas where time costs more money that's when you get bigger blocks that need machines to move them or you get formed and poured structures.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#457

Post by throwaway0a5e »

123pie123 wrote: post #409
fy20 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are talking about are facing bricks, which are used on the facade. In Europe almost all new residential construction is made from masonry blocks, which are basically just bigger bricks. 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, an…

> but have low tensile strength which is probably why they aren't popular in North America) out of curiosity, why do the blocks need to be different in North America?

The person appears to be from Europe. If HN is the bulk of their exposure to mundane topics regarding the US I can see why they'd be unaware that California building codes are not representative of the rest of the nation.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#458

Post by jacquesm »

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…

I just ordered two all-wood staircases to replace the steel spiral monstrosity that was built into the house where I live from the beginning. It was unsafe, unstable and way too steep so they really had to go. But the stairwell is a weird shape, there is partial overlap with the front door and the direction of turn had to be reversed. Enter the master carpenter who spent a 1/2 hour to measure up the stairwell and who then proceeded to create two new complete stairs that fit to the millimeter and solved all of the weird problems in one fell swoop. It wasn't cheap, but given the challenges and the materials used, the fact that they will probably last another 60 years or so and that they look amazing I figure that it was well worth it.

No way you could automate that kind of ingenuity. So, props to your dad, and there are more people like him still doing this work today.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#459

Post by throwaway0a5e »

exabrial wrote: post #199

If you think bricklaying is a simple task, you've probably never laid bricks, or likely ever worked a construction job. There is _a lot_ that goes into laying a brick wall. From excavation, base compaction, material choice, mortar composition and viscosity, wall type, overlap patterns, leveling, overhang patterns, set time, and much more. Using an incorrect overhang pattern for instance can allow water drops to fall…

>If you think bricklaying is a simple task, you've probably never laid bricks, or likely ever worked a construction job.

If you think the bulk of the actual laying of bricks, siding of a wall or shingling of a roof isn't a simple task you've never worked a construction job.

Thinking is required around corners, windows and other interruptions. The bulk of the material laid, hung or otherwise expended is done so in a simple and repetitive manner. Once you've figured out your non-standard bits of the job you basically just run on autopilot.

That said, I agree that 99% of the the engineers who try and design this stuff never actually have the requisite experience to understand the nuance of what's going on.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#460

Post by throwaway0a5e »

simion314 wrote: post #339
jiggawatts wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> tamping it down manually. In other words, the problem was that the machine worked perfectly, and would have resulted in a bunch of union job losses. Hence, it was "no good" and had to go.

> a typical SV anti-union response if we do such low level comments then let me speculate it was not the union at fault but the developers, they used node.js and 1000 buggy and bad coded libraries.

To be fair, highway/road construction is notorious for being an industry where the .gov and the unions bloat things in order to make more easy money for each other.

Tropes about one guy working and four supervising or tearing up recent work just to fix something you didn't fix while you were at it don't persist because the industry is a shining beacon of economic efficiency, they persist because they're universal enough to be relatable.

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