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Where are the robotic bricklayers?

constructionphysics.substack.com

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Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#511

Post by Chris2048 »

wnkrshm wrote: post #442
VBprogrammer wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The change is already there, prefab build techniques lead to construction companies keeping everything in-house - from crane operators to plumbers. The building is split into parts that can be built in-house and then assembled on-site - the aim is to have the structure with a roof on it as quickly as possible, since that makes you more independent of weather for finishing it. Especially for warehouses and facotries i…

> the aim is to have the structure with a roof on it as quickly as possible

Couldn't you just build a tent-like scaffolding for this purpose? Maybe one that can be extended as the internal build progresses?

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#512

Post by yholio »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #427
cudgy wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I meant the US and Europe. And by extension places of that nature. Slower growing aging populations and the realization that low density single family both burdens local government with costly infrastructure that generates low revenue. Like a sewer main with 100 customers per mile. Only sustainable when growing fast. There is a lot of multifamily being built despite fairly intense NIMBYism. And despite that you're se…

There is no fundamental reason for urban sprawl to stop. Western living standards and wealth are increasing, and the actual material costs of laying a sewer pipe or road become negligible.

With the advent of electric self driving cars, transportation becomes cheap and hassle free. A network of highways converging to an urban center served by Boring co Loop tunnels can gather trafic from a 30 mile area. As long as travel times are less than say, around 45 minutes, those people will be living "in the city".

A 30 mile radius means about 7 million plots of 10000 sq feet, so you could accommodate more than 20 million inhabitants in this suburbopolis of single detached family homes.

The factors preventing it are land prices, regulatory pressure and homebuyer tastes.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#513

Post by MaxikCZ »

sandworm101 wrote: post #481
d--b wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

>> robot that could just lay some bricks How often does that actually come up in modern construction? We don't really do brick buildings anymore. Bricks are generally only a façade, a decoration, rather than the structure of a building. They have to look great because that is now their job. They have to fit between other decorative features and adapt to curves and non-perfect angles. Previous edge cases are now a dai…

I do not know where you live, but I can speak for Czech republic (mid Europe): basically all houses are made by layling bricks. Its not "the" small brick, it typically range 10-50 cm in depth, which is its shortest dimension. Sure, theres ytong and such, but that too is essentially a big brick. Module or wood houses are absolute minority here.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#514

Post by brianwawok »

wil421 wrote: post #162
brianwawok wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don’t buy brick houses. They buy vinyl siding which is 1/5 the cost of bricks and bricklaying.

That’s not the case in my area. Lots of homes are wood framed and 3 sided brick with vinyl in the rear.

Depends on price for sure. In Chicago where a new single family home is 1.5 million dollars, better believe its brick.

Where I live in Indiana an average single family home is like 200k. No one is paying 50k for brick on that, so vinyl siding you go.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#515

Post by sandworm101 »

MaxikCZ wrote: post #513
sandworm101 wrote: post #481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> robot that could just lay some bricks How often does that actually come up in modern construction? We don't really do brick buildings anymore. Bricks are generally only a façade, a decoration, rather than the structure of a building. They have to look great because that is now their job. They have to fit between other decorative features and adapt to curves and non-perfect angles. Previous edge cases are now a dai…

I do not know where you live, but I can speak for Czech republic (mid Europe): basically all houses are made by layling bricks. Its not "the" small brick, it typically range 10-50 cm in depth, which is its shortest dimension. Sure, theres ytong and such, but that too is essentially a big brick. Module or wood houses are absolute minority here.

In north american, hand-laid bricks are just to expensive. It is far cheaper to build wooden forms and fill them with concrete. Bricks are then stacked as non-structural decoration on the outside of the concrete or wood walls.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#516

Post by wallacoloo »

krapp wrote: post #137
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…

>The problem seems to be people have a emotional idea of what a dream house is, an idea that is firmly stuck in the red brick house of 1970's sitcoms. Your fully automated house-extrusion company isn't going to have many customers, especially after you explain to people why their ideal dream home is obsolete and that they should pay you for a plascrete tube to live in instead because the profit margins are better. Th…

> ideal dream home

It’s weird to focus on the upper end of the market for a thing like this. If the utility in automated construction is to reduce costs, it might make more sense to consider the more price-conscious portion of the market. I.e. starter homes and the like. My guess is that since there are so many other large costs involve in home construction, automating this one component just doesn’t make a significant price impact in almost any market segment.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#517

Post by themaninthedark »

yodelshady wrote: post #482
coldacid wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not destroying your body lifting heavy weights for 50 years seems like something people might like. And that's why the exoskeleton system mentioned in passing in the article is more popular with construction labourers than any of these robots.

Think I'd put money behind a separate machine, but one that just delivers you the brick at hand height, rather than a continual bend-down/place/pick-up cycle. I would say "Brick Butler" or if a startup... Brcklr, the device is free, but the bricks have DRM and post instagram stories as you lay them.

Nice, also build a management interface so they can see the workers brick per hour stats.

Add in GPS, keep all the data and later sell the database to insurance companies so they can charge higher rates for construction that happened too fast.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#518

Post by vl »

sandworm101 wrote: post #515
MaxikCZ wrote: post #513

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know where you live, but I can speak for Czech republic (mid Europe): basically all houses are made by layling bricks. Its not "the" small brick, it typically range 10-50 cm in depth, which is its shortest dimension. Sure, theres ytong and such, but that too is essentially a big brick. Module or wood houses are absolute minority here.

In north american, hand-laid bricks are just to expensive. It is far cheaper to build wooden forms and fill them with concrete. Bricks are then stacked as non-structural decoration on the outside of the concrete or wood walls.

My guess would be that the main reason is that in the event of the earthquake you would survive in the second and die in the first.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#519

Post by rwmj »

It's a good article, but he doesn't mention TBMs which use robotic arms to lay the concrete semi-circular blocks that line the tunnel, and I believe that's mostly or completely automated. Of course that is a more narrowly scoped problem than general wall building.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#520

Post by webmaven »

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…

> Whenever you see a wall being made of red clay bricks, that’s because the builder wants it to look nice.

There is a scene in Penny Dreadful (Which is set in a fictionalized Victorian London) where a character laments all the brick buildings that are being built, replacing wood buildings that have "character", because wood "holds its history" unlike bricks which are all the same, forever.

The main appeal of bricks is essentially nostalgic, similar to the appeal of low resolution 8-bit graphics. We call one 'traditional' and the other 'retro' but those labels are arbitrary.

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