Where are the robotic bricklayers?

Post by markdown » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #432

markdown wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robots in factories can only do one job, building the same car over and over again.

Which is neither here nor there. It's still automation (which, as a concept, doesn't require being able to do multiple jobs, or even to do a single job from start to completion). A mechanical system that frees a human from having to do do part of a job is already automation, and can still save tons of time and worker costs/effort. E.g. a system that automatically assembles 95% of a car door, and a human just has to c…

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 9:55 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…

Post by HeyLaughingBoy » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 10:03 PM UTC

eloisius wrote: post #395

forcry wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Post by azernik » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 10:33 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…

Post by bsder » Wed, Aug 04, 2021, 11:02 PM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #358

exporectomy wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bogus reason. Plastic melt is also a non-Newtonian fluid and yet plastic parts production is thoroughly automated.

I’m not sure that tracks exactly. I think the issue is the stacking of very heavy things on top of a nnf goop.