[HN Gopher] Where are the robotic bricklayers?
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Where are the robotic bricklayers?
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 95 points
Date : 2021-08-03 21:43 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (constructionphysics.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (constructionphysics.substack.com)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| We had an "automated" pothole filler, in my town. When they
| purchased it, there was a bunch of hooplah. They had a news crew,
| in front of my house, showing it off. It spritzed asphalt into
| the pothole, tamped it down, then went on to the next one. All
| automatic! There was a driver, but he looked _really_ bored.
|
| Months later, I have only seen one (probably the same one they
| demoed in front of my house). It was clearly defective. The crew
| was using it to dump the asphalt, and they were tamping it down
| manually.
| tacostakohashi wrote:
| > They had a news crew, in front of my house, showing it off.
|
| Sounds like it did its job - it got some positive publicity for
| the people that bought it and manufactured it, and the fact
| that it doesn't actually work is a problem left with taxpayers
| and town employees.
| egh wrote:
| The great contempt that computer people have for the skills that
| every human brings to the jobs that the do is always on display
| here. We haven't automated driving; we haven't automated picking
| tomatoes; we haven't automated bricklaying; we can't automate
| cooking a fucking hamburger. But they are completely convinced
| that it's just around the corner, because they are full of
| contempt for the skill and intelligence of ordinary people.
|
| Frank Bardacke in his book, _Trampling out the Vintage_ describes
| the great _skill_ that agriculture workers bring to the job that
| they do, from knowing whether something is ripe enough to pick to
| the dexterity required to pick it without destroying the fragile
| fruit or vegetable. Some jobs have been automated, but many more
| have not and most likely never will be.
|
| Please, learn some humility and try to understand the skills that
| every human possesses and that they bring to their work.
| grandmczeb wrote:
| > The great contempt that computer people have for the skills
| that every human brings to the jobs that the do is always on
| display here.
|
| I'm confused - based on your Github profile I assume you'd fall
| under the category of "computer people". Are you saying _you_
| feel this way? Because I certainly don 't.
| pradeep_m wrote:
| I think this is a rather harsh take. Most of the people working
| on automating it understand how hard it is and are striving
| through it. You need some of these irrational believers for
| progress!
| Permit wrote:
| > But they are completely convinced that it's just around the
| corner, because they are full of contempt for the skill and
| intelligence of ordinary people.
|
| Can you think of any other reasons that people might believe
| something like automated driving is right around the corner?
|
| Or is "contempt for the skill and intelligence of ordinary
| people" the only reason one might believe this?
| somenewaccount1 wrote:
| I agree with you in general, but not about the hamburgers.
| https://www.creator.rest/
| OnlineGladiator wrote:
| That thing is well-known to break all the time. You can even
| find people on Yelp talking about how the robot is broken.
| It's mostly old technology anyway; it's still a fundamentally
| mechatronic system similar to what AMF made several decades
| ago.
|
| https://youtu.be/FmXLqImT1wE
|
| That one didn't make money either, and it also broke a lot,
| and had all sorts of other problems. Believe it or not, the
| core technology has improved a lot less than you might think.
| They may have put a prettier skin on it but it's still the
| wrong approach.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I don't have contempt for the skills; I have great respect for
| the skills. I have contempt for the prices of things.
|
| If construction costs are cheaper than ever (are they really?)
| why can't I buy a box to live in without spending $300,000?
|
| Why is the permits process nationally broken? And despite being
| skilled, that doesn't mean they're informed: why do contractors
| not know what they're supposed to do? Why do the people handing
| out permits not know what they're doing?
|
| See also: trying to renovate or buy a home in Arizona.
| pvorb wrote:
| Construction costs are cheaper than ever? The prices have
| skyrocketed in the past year. Is this something special to
| Germany? I would've expected that the pandemic shows equal
| effects elsewhere.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I'm just saying this because every but-actually poster says
| something like this, but I think homes come with more
| amenities now than they did in the 70s, so buying a home
| isn't really any cheaper adjusted for inflation.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| Because people have great skill in exploiting other people as
| well.
| version_five wrote:
| I used to work in a family construction business and now I do
| machine learning contracting. When I compare the value you
| get for 300k worth of construction to what 300k of ML
| specialist time buys you, it's hard to agree with your
| comment. I understand the reasons, but generally I'm blown
| away by how cheap most labor intensive things are, compared
| to how much people will pay for software projects.
| elhesuu wrote:
| Why do you assume construction costs are the only factor that
| drives property value?
| avgDev wrote:
| Cost of lumber, cost of land, cost of equipment, cost of
| permits, cost of inspections.
|
| It really isn't a box for $300k. You can buy a mobile home
| for what $60k?
|
| Permit process isn't broken.....this is a view often held by
| incompetent contractors. I have performed various jobs like
| building retaining walls, bathrooms, electrical, decks and
| never had an issue as long as my work was up to code.
|
| Permits can protect a homeowner, when the contractor bails
| without finish the work.
|
| But back to why a home can be $300k, it is a lot of work and
| materials. From an article, "According to NAHB, the average
| material cost to build a house is $296,652, with the average
| square footage of a house being 2,594. That means your cost
| per square foot is $114.36 ($296,652 / 2,594)."
|
| You are underestimating how much it costs to get lumber,
| copper(can use pex), brick, concrete etc.
|
| You sound like someone saying, I can have a wordpress site
| for $1000, but why does it cost $500k to build an ecommerce
| platform.
| orev wrote:
| The price consumers pay for something has nothing to do with
| the cost of producing it. Not counting the cost of the land
| itself, an identical house built in the city costs the same
| in hours and materials as one in the country. Price is
| determined by one thing, and one thing only: how much other
| people are willing to pay for it (i.e. the market sets the
| prices).
|
| The costs vs sale price are relevant to the _builder_ in
| making the decision on whether to build and whether to sell,
| as they wouldn't do it if they're going to lose money.
| savanaly wrote:
| This is only true in the short run by the way. In the long
| run, in a competitive market, cost is absolutely the driver
| of price.
| narrator wrote:
| Need rage like this is a lot of what is wrong with society. The
| nerd rage is in a lot of different professions, not just
| engineering.
| neutronicus wrote:
| Trying to grow plants outdoors is a humbling experience for
| sure
| Someone wrote:
| > we haven't automated picking tomatoes
|
| I wouldn't know whether their claims hold water, but
| http://www.automatorobotics.com/autonomous-single-tomato-
| har...:
|
| _A robot that can reliably detect ripe tomatoes and harvest
| them with consistent quality at a rate of 10-12 tomatoes per
| minute.
|
| [...]
|
| reducing the harvest costs by 50%_
|
| (The videos give me the impression that "10-12 tomatoes per
| minute" is best-case)
| Guest42 wrote:
| I see this pretty frequently in manufacturing. Oftentimes,
| larger products will have curves, design changes, layering
| complexities, and judgment calls that simply can't be performed
| via machine, further, the parts will come in at different times
| and assembly lines themselves will have to be flexible and
| optimize for the given real estate.
| colordrops wrote:
| Having respect for the skills of a worker and also believing
| that they are possible to automate are not mutually exclusive.
| It's no different from people saying the same thing about chess
| and chess players, or go and go players, before the problem was
| solved.
|
| And it's not just blue collar workers that are a target of this
| idea. We are already starting to see automated programming
| moving out of the research lab and into the commercial realm,
| e.g. GitHub copilot.
| cogman10 wrote:
| It's always a little weird the jobs that are easy to automate
| vs the jobs that are hard to automate.
|
| Jobs that require interaction with the physical world and
| people will almost always be a hard to automate thing. There
| are simply too many variables.
|
| The real problem is when we make the results of a job worse to
| aid in automation. The prime example here is tomatoes being
| breed with thick skin, picked before ripened, and then squirted
| with some chemicals to make them red so people will buy them.
| All while sacrificing taste.
| bsder wrote:
| People also seem to always miss that we always engineer the
| product in order to be able to automate it.
|
| The most automated things have been designed by engineers _with
| robotic assembly in mind_.
| spyckie2 wrote:
| 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 some of the labor part of the job, but still keeping the
| decision making part of the job for humans.
|
| This is both economically unviable and largely unpopular. You're
| not reducing labor costs by much, because you still need humans
| around. And workers lose control over their job, and have to
| "work around" the robot's limitations. Instead of being freed up
| to do more work, they become babysitters of machines that they
| have to oversee so it doesn't mess up everything.
|
| 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.
| version_five wrote:
| What you're saying resonates for so many new products. I find
| that most time or labor saving ideas save time on something
| that is not actually the problem, or address a charicature of
| the actual workflow. I dont think it means we should give up
| and stop trying, rather that its critical to test with real
| users IMO before trying to sign deals on a product that doesn't
| make sense.
| pvorb wrote:
| And sometimes the things that are automated were the only
| thing that was pleasant. It's not true for laying bricks
| because the heavy lifting makes it unpleasant.
| coldacid wrote:
| Not just test! Real users need to be there from the
| requirements stage.
| version_five wrote:
| Yes agreed, sorry I was thinking in terms of a new product,
| testing the value prop with users, which is probably better
| stated as requirements gathering.
| mavhc wrote:
| Not destroying your body lifting heavy weights for 50 years
| seems like something people might like.
|
| We automated looking after the house after it's been built, no
| need for people scrubbing floors and clothes any more, freed up
| 40% of the workforce.
|
| My partially automated vacuum cleaner, clothes washer, dish
| washer, food cooker, water heater, all work well.
| coldacid wrote:
| >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.
| yarg wrote:
| There's no need for robotic brick layers - it's requires
| significantly less dexterity to just 3D print a house, and it
| allows for shapes and contours that are simply impossible to
| construct from bricks.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Indeed. If you have heavy machinery available, why use bricks?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Bricks are easier to remodel and repair than concrete. You
| can take them out, replace them, etc.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Bricks are good at demolition time, compared to poured
| concrete, and can be recycled. They also look kinda nice.
| bern4444 wrote:
| I think this reveals a much more interesting trend that's
| likely to continue.
|
| It's not that existing jobs will always be automated, we'll
| come up with tools that completely automate several layers of
| work.
|
| It's a different view than all current jobs will be automated.
| Automation can be used to remove several verticals and improve
| efficiency by magnitudes in the process.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| And yet, almost no houses at all are 3D printed.
|
| People are very good at bricklaying, and are paid a reasonable
| rate by the hour. No one has made a machine that can beat that
| feature set.
|
| edit: more great features of human brickies that robots are
| terrible at: very small working volume; very small and agile
| footprint; safe for other humans to work near; half-day built-
| in power supply.
| yarg wrote:
| Which is still infinitely more than 30 years ago.
| ianbicking wrote:
| Are there buildings that aren't demonstrations that are
| being printed? There's always been demonstration homes and
| buildings using novel techniques, and that's no indication
| that the technique will go anywhere.
| 7373737373 wrote:
| The number of edge cases is simply too high
| Fricken wrote:
| It's easy to program a robot to do one thing right. It us very
| difficult to train a robot to deal with the myriad things that
| can go wrong while attempting to do one thing right.
| nashashmi wrote:
| 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 is called a paving machine.
| And it requires an operator and two-man crew to maintain. So no
| real advantage besides workers won't be tired. And the leveling
| will be done super well.
|
| Other automation problems are similar. If there is no need for
| precision, there is no need for automation.
| analog31 wrote:
| Where are the robotic hod carriers?
|
| Without looking closely at the economics, my impression is that
| brick work is expensive, but if you want it cheaper, you can get
| siding installed.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Seems like it's another mini-mills waiting to happen, with
| perhaps ML as the required technological innovation.
|
| Current low hanging fruit is long, straight walls. So a few
| customers will bite, using the human masons (who are paid more)
| as the high quality, judgement based service. The easy sections
| will be done by the machine.
|
| Over time the machine maker uses their foothold to encroach on
| the more juicy work. As they collect data some ML will creep in
| and solve some of the harder brick laying issues. Maybe it will
| figure out about the mortar too.
|
| Eventually the machine will be doing the whole job, and you can
| use an app to build yourself a heart-shaped wall just for fun.
|
| Or perhaps there's just no economic incentive, and more
| inexperienced masons will do the easy bits for the foreseeable.
| punnerud wrote:
| Combine ML with a wire system used for stadium camera, and you
| get a cheap robot that is both strong and have a long range
|
| Wire camera example: https://youtu.be/j0K3XUqZI9w?t=187
| inasio wrote:
| They state in the article that the main problem is not in
| positioning the bricks/blocks, but on handling the cement
| mixture (non-Newtonian fluid...)
| nabla9 wrote:
| Do prefabricated brick wall elements count.
| adrr wrote:
| As mentioned in the article. There are brick laying machines for
| roads that are really interesting.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cGhzzcgfHNc
| sharkmerry wrote:
| but that still has a human loading it and arranging the bricks,
| which i presume is amongst the largest time sink, sometimes 2.
| It is probably a vast improvment in terms of human-power
| required though
| malwarebytess wrote:
| Obviously, it's a conspiracy by the Freemasons to control their
| ancestral art. (sorry)
| balozi wrote:
| The problem is not the science or the mechanics. The problem is
| the economics. And not just the economics of any single builder,
| but of the construction industry as whole.
| [deleted]
| zz865 wrote:
| The last few decades I've seen a lot of bigger buildings have
| slab concrete walls with brick veneers. This seems a quicker and
| cheaper way of doing it. Would seem like a good place to try to
| automate the veneer placement.
| filoeleven wrote:
| Mostly unrelated, but the headline reminded me of this very
| satisfying video.
|
| https://youtu.be/-BTWiZ7CYoI
| dalbasal wrote:
| Great read.
|
| This kind of reminds me of auto manufacturing. It's almost
| unintuitive how difficult, expensive & error prone paneling is.
| Also painting. Stamping out panels, painting and installing them
| is a very hard job to do with robotics. Most of the space,
| treasure and expertise invested into an auto factory is panel
| related. The "possible, but perpetually difficult" space can be a
| deep valley for robotics, it seems.
|
| ...And bricklaying, while conspicuous and important, is still
| just one job in construction.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > ...And bricklaying, while conspicuous and important, is still
| just one job in construction.
|
| My understanding is that bricklaying is a bottleneck. You can
| do things before bricklaying, and things after, but not really
| at the same time.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| lol.. and we're talking about AI replacing humans next year so
| come get your basic income check.
| magwa101 wrote:
| Bricklayers do not get paid as much as programmers.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Cheaper to hire a human for $20 an hour.
| [deleted]
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| It'd be nice to see an actual cost breakdown. All-in cost per
| brick laid at a certain capacity factor between major maintenance
| events and so on.
| ThomPete wrote:
| the will come over time, just not yet as its still to expensive
| and there is still too much generational baggage to force the
| change.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Fun read! I feel like that's one of the first thing you learn out
| of college that's a bit of a rude awakening. While ideas are fun,
| economics kill during execution. Without a scalable product that
| solves the right problem, it's pretty hard to make a good product
| (unless you get VC money and sell things at a lost anyway).
| glasss wrote:
| I recall finding the below blog post on HN not long ago which I
| think pairs well with this.
|
| https://austinvernon.eth.link/blog/construction.html
| aaron695 wrote:
| This should be required reading for probably anyone who votes.
|
| This quote is my take away -
|
| "Almost every advancement in construction is small enough for a
| man to carry"
| scotty79 wrote:
| Not quite. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plattenbau
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