Where are the robotic bricklayers? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#471

Post by danans » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 12:43 PM UTC

MagnumOpus wrote: post #373

turtlebits wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bricks are for decorative purposes nowadays (pretty siding). They aren't practical as you won't meet code for insulation. You will also need to frame another interior wall for vapor control. A single layer brick wall isn't structural.

> A single layer brick wall isn't structural My 92-year old house with single layer brick walls says otherwise. (And yes, it insulates badly, but it kept standing through a lot of storms.)

> My 92-year old house with single layer brick walls says otherwise. (

Not structural by current building standards. No doubt it is carrying a load today, bit you can't build a house that way anymore.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#472

Post by d--b » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 12:43 PM 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…

The construction industry is full of these "convenience" tools. If you had a working human-sized robot that could just lay some bricks, pretty sure everyone would use it, even if it didn't do the angles or whatever.

The problem must be somewhere else: setup time is too long, too many constrains or whatever. It's not that the edge cases are not handled, it's that the main case is not handled well...

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#473

Post by quirkot » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 12:49 PM UTC

Robotic masonry is the "faster horses" version of cars. It's everything humans do easily but is nearly impossible for machines

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#474

Post by londons_explore » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 12:50 PM UTC

Laying the bricks is only a tiny proportion of building a brick house.

A good brick layer can do all the work in a few days.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#475

Post by ben_bai » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 12:53 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #329

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…

In the end it's about the same cost (for the same quality).

Also prefab houses have a lead time of about 6 month.

But once the on site build has started it's fast and those elements come with electrics, water piping and (sometimes) windows preinstalled. They just need to be connected.

You basically have the choice between the classic building methods with an architect and contractors, or an All-in-One Firm that has it's own contractors and almost always uses the prefab model. The later also is way less hassle for the once-in-a-lifetime home builder, usually.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#476

Post by eloisius » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 1:15 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #444

eloisius wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not spotlight the fact that lower prices facilitate accessibility, but I'm not oblivious to it. I definitely don't want to exchange cheap cotton knit t-shirts with hand-woven garments that cost me a month's labor or something. However, only considering the consumer-side satisfaction is characteristic of our culture's obsession with consumerism and economy at the cost of everything else. We all have to work, ev…

At a higher price you can still find craftsmanship. But now, as always, you have to afford it. And regarding consumerism, it's not only consumerism. Washing machines and fridges and freezers and microwaves changed the way we lived. Especially washing machines and fridges made our lives much easier and better.

I'm also not a Luddite, so if it seems I'm making a vast anti-tech argument, I'm truly not. It's easy to get drawn into a futurism vs tradition argument, but I don't want to take either side in that debate. I love tools and I love inventions that amplify a human being's power and effectiveness. But there are tools that are miserable to use, produce horrible results, but are just enough to be acceptable and offer The Business enormous cost savings (or sometimes just the illusion of it). I don't have the energy to try and write a manifesto right now for which tools fall into either camp, but maybe some day.

I like writing code, and I think a lot of other people do too. But it's not just that I like writing the code and want it to be as low-level and arcane as possible. Give me a language that lets me be more expressive and accomplish more and I'll be all the more happy to adopt this tool and incorporate it into my craft.

But, imagine The Business decides that coders writing code is just too expensive, so we've purchased an AI that dials into all the conference calls stakeholders have regarding a project, and subsequently it can generate all the code necessary to meet the requirements. Well, kind of. After sitting in on the meetings, it can instantly generate the code that would have taken a dev team a whole quarter, and then send it over to QA. The only catch is that code is spaghetti and the defect rate is really high. Still, The Business only needs 25% of the coders that it used to have. But their job is a little different now. They don't write code per se. They just QA and fix bugs. The code is horrible, there's no design or architecture to speak of, it's hard to debug, and fixing defects is mind-numbing. But, at the end of the day, the low quality product is still good enough to sell, everyone else in the industry is doing it too, and besides, the cost savings is too huge to ignore.

No one has to "write" code anymore. Did our lives get easier and better? What is the ultimate end of easiest and best? No one has to do a thing and minimally acceptable food shows up when we're hungry while we continually slurp down personalized, proceduraly generated sitcoms?

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#477

Post by x86_64Ubuntu » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

octokatt wrote: post #98

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’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…

From a financial perspective, no one cares if the blue collar laborer has a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. We've automated away plenty of jobs out there with little concern about the devices having to be babysat or how the observers feel.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#478

Post by eru » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 1:26 PM UTC

whateveracct wrote: post #243

ALittleLight wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Haskell automates a lot of programming but it sure isn't easy

Haskell is fun, but it isn't special in this regard.

Any language any human would touch these days automates lots and lots of things for you.

(Even Assemblers do a lot for you nowadays.)

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#479

Post by jameshart » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 1:27 PM UTC

octokatt wrote: post #98

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’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…

> We don’t need to solve just for the physical actions, but also for the human experience of building and the feeling of mastery. Particularly for physical trades.

This is like complaining that cars did away with the pleasures of horsemanship, or how laser printers have destroyed the pride engravers derived from their work.

The history of technology is full of taking hard tasks that people took years to master and therefore derived status and self respect from, and replacing them with machines. People cope.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#480

Post by JacobDotVI » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 1:27 PM 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…

Would you not consider a power drill a "partial robotic system"? Is this a situation where once something is useful it switches from being a "robot" to just a "power tool" and so "robots" are a kind of endless frontier?