Where are the robotic bricklayers? • Hacker News Board

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#521

Post by webmaven » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

himinlomax wrote: post #465

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. The article mentions cinder blocks ("CMU") -- those are not typically pleasant to look at. Even the ones that are less unpleasant are usually covered, with sidings or paint.

At some point cinder block construction will become it's own aesthetic (or an element of an aesthetic), perhaps something like the current 'industrial' trend or maybe an architectural equivalent of 'tactical' stylng.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#522

Post by munificent » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

SlapperKoala wrote: post #422

munificent wrote: post #93

With human bricklayers, you can find enough people who have that skill that the pay is low. Here in the US, the availability of illegal immigrants means that the pay is often literally criminally low and you don't have to provide benefits. Replace those bricklayers with a robot and its caretakers and now you need: 1. Someone with technical training who can keep the bot running happily. Since the technology is new and…

The cheapest way to automate something is always poor people.This applies even more so in the developing world. Where the vast majority of new construction is happening. Though it would be interesting to see what the state of construction is like in developed countries that don't have access to a vast pool of cheap immigrant labor. Maybe New Zealand? Northern Europe?

> The cheapest way to automate something is always poor people.

The corrolary to this, if you are a tech nerd who wants to see more automation is: If you want more automation, work to reduce poverty. Support unions, high wages, and other systems that give people the freedom to say no to shitty jobs that robots could do.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#523

Post by Chris2048 » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

iso1631 wrote: post #450

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…

> Does no one care about how their house looks? They'd rather just cargo cult an ugly McMansion that was produced at the lowest cost possible? Sure. Now put the build cost of the mcmansion of say $200k (plus land), vs your hand crafted mansion at $500k (plus land), and see what people really want. In my country cookie cutter housing goes back over 100 years. The massive post-ww2 housing boom had the same design of ho…

> most people just want somewhere to live

sure, except old houses sell for pretty high prices, implying there are plenty of people who want more than just a house.

I think there is a big difference between people without a house, who want to get on the lower rung of the housing ladder, and escape the poverty of renting (where rent costs more than mortgage payments, without any equity) versus those that have a house and want something better.

Cheap houses should be build (maybe even w/ government funding) to keep otherwise exploitative rentals competitive, but there should still be healthy competition & industry in higher quality housing.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#524

Post by throwaway0a5e » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #502

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But not your Texan school textbook regulations…

Meh, every state has crap curriculum. They all just skip different chapters of history or science depending on the way the local political winds blow.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#525

Post by RegBarclay » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 6:49 PM UTC

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…

I've laid a little block and brick for myself. I found it kind of fun and pretty rewarding work. As soon as I saw the headline and started pre-thinking about the content, I immediately thought, "well, the mortar for one thing..." The bricks aren't all that uniform either. My big takeaway from doing myself was that it's easy to obsess over each brick (like a machine might) but when people look at a brick wall, they see the forest, not the trees: it's not necessary for each brick to be laid perfectly.

I also heartily second volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. It's rewarding work, fun if you're with a good crew, and a great way to learn new skills.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#526

Post by GFischer » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 6:50 PM UTC

Symmetry wrote: post #504

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

After WWII there was a big boom in houses made that way in the United States too but then homebuilders were able to get legislation passed so that "a small manufactured house is disfavored because it’s mobile like a vehicle but it is also required by law to be mobile like a vehicle" and the problem for them went away. https://www.slowboring.com/p/trailer-regulation

Very interesting read, we're facing similar regulatory capture issues here in my country.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#527

Post by spyckie2 » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #494

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 build robotic cells, specifically industrial manufacturing automation. They are definitely designed for the main workflow; they handle the most common exceptions gracefully but when something rare happens they just throw a fault back to the operator. The response from users (operators, engineers, customers) is overwhelmingly positive. Quality of parts increases, quantity of parts increases, cost of operations decre…

I didn't expect this comment to get this much discussion, I should have been clearer.

In the context of automation, the "robotic revolution" has already happened between the 4 industrial revolutions - basically, robots exist en masse already, we just don't call them robots. The majority of manufacturing and processing is already hyper optimized to only needing a few overseers to make sure the machines are running smoothly.

When talking about the automation revolution, I think it's important to make the distinction between robotic tooling and autonomous robotic systems, even though they evolve from each other. The difference is when humans interface and at what abstraction humans can operate it on. Generally, tooling is constrained to an individual's output. Robotic augmentation is in it's own category as well (human activities being enhanced by machinery).

Tooling is extremely useful, still has a lot of future potential and I don't mean to undermine work on new tooling. Just - usually when we look at robots, especially with the buzz around deep learning, we set the bar for problem solving at the level of autonomous construction because we assume, sometimes incorrectly, that optimizing our current tooling yields little efficiency benefits relative to the former.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#528

Post by simion314 » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 6:56 PM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #460

simion314 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 eno…

Or it could be also that we the web devs have no clue why some engineer that needs to know to read plans and maps is always needed when some guys need to dig. Mistakes happen with this engineers supervising (cables and pipes get cut or damaged) I imagine without them there will always be more problems.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#529

Post by spyckie2 » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

mbesto wrote: post #237

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…

> This is why partial robotic systems don't really exist; either it's a nifty tool that speeds up a small repeatable process of your work, or it's building the entire house. I think I understand your overall point, but what you said isn't exactly true. Isn't "speed up a repeatable process" essentially a partial robotic system? Just look at a modern car manufacturing plant - it's essentially one big chain of robotics…

Yeah, my point wasn't really well stated, I think that was why it generated discussion.

Robots exist en masse already, we just don't call them robots, we call them washing machines and dishwashers and factory lines. There's a blurred line in between machines that do stuff and robots.

In discussing the automation revolution, I like to think the difference is robots functioning autonomously (sorry dishwasher, you're not included). While there is still a lot left to do in speeding up repeatable processes, building robots that can run themselves with higher abstract operational input ("build a brick wall") is where the revolution is at.

Robotic tooling plays a huge role in this, unsurprisingly - robots need to do everything humans can do. But... we mostly build human interfaces, not robot interfaces - switches instead of electrical signals, handles instead of joints, etc.

This is for good reason; mass produced robots can't do basic movement, precise placement, etc. (well, not at cost). So robots are extremely limited to being bolted in factories or otherwise constrained environments. But when robots can start to do generalized tasks, I'd be interested in seeing exactly what kinds of autonomous stuff robots will start to do.

Re: Where are the robotic bricklayers?

#530

Post by exabrial » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 8:37 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #443

alfalfasprout wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there's another comment to this effect and it's spot-on. I suspect a lot of the people quick to work on these automation projects don't fully understand the complexity behind it. Just reading the descriptions of the early and later machines shows the comical oversimplification of laying bricks.

A lot of complex tasks are done by machine today, and they do it better than master craftsmen. The thing is, designing a machine may be really complex, but it only has to be done once. After that, the machine will repeat the process with extreme precision. A machine can position bricks within microns and mix mortar to the milligram, doing things level and with the correct overhang is jokingly easy for a machine. What…

You forgot trees in the yard, how much sunlight the wall receives, moisture content of the soil beneath the brick walls, roots that are growing there, and existing structure.

The hard part isn't laying bricks. It can be already be done in a day efficiently. The hard part is the near infinite things that are different between every construction site.