[HN Gopher] Human-Free Construction (2018)
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       Human-Free Construction (2018)
        
       Author : danny00
       Score  : 17 points
       Date   : 2022-05-08 08:36 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.forconstructionpros.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.forconstructionpros.com)
        
       | baremetal wrote:
       | i love the idea of 3d printing a building. i dabble in 3d
       | printing already, making parts to facilitate my other hobbies,
       | and it would be great to deploy a machine that prints a
       | structure.
       | 
       | I own a business framing houses, it would radically change the
       | dynamic in that field. However i am confident i could execute in
       | that new environment, given the technology.
       | 
       | Makes me want to start an open source 3d building printer
       | foundation.
        
         | engineer_22 wrote:
         | I think the problem with printing houses is there's no space in
         | the walls for utilities.
         | 
         | It might be useful for making concrete tanks. I think the
         | problem is in including the steel reinforcements.
        
           | baremetal wrote:
           | using concrete yeah id agree.
           | 
           | would require some new materials to be viable, most
           | certainly.
        
       | sorenn111 wrote:
       | This reads a little like the early days of self driving car
       | optimism or factory roboticizing. Everything looks so easy with
       | an easy rollout, but enjoy the long tail. To me, car companies
       | and Amazon have high incentive to use robotics and a really
       | controlled environment and they still need a lot of humans. Those
       | use cases will be more thoroughly solve (IMO) before any
       | variable-environment use cases get fully automated. I'm not a
       | pessimist and I really want a lot of automated stuff, but I don't
       | think the tech is there yet.
        
       | halffaday wrote:
       | >2024: autonomous machinery takes over
       | 
       | Mass-grading is the only part of construction anywhere close to
       | this that I'm aware of. Manufacturing processes for building
       | materials are really impressive, but it's a different story on
       | the job site where you constantly have to make judgments about
       | the work environment. I think most of the low-hanging fruit for
       | automation is in the design process.
        
       | mcbishop wrote:
       | One use case: In solar installations, we spend a lot of time on
       | the roof taking measurements and snapping chalk lines. This could
       | be replaced by aerial measurement and mixed-reality glasses.
        
         | segmondy wrote:
         | This is already solved.
         | https://www.eagleview.com/industry/solar/
        
           | engineer_22 wrote:
           | Eagle view uses aerial photos to figure out how big roofs
           | are.
        
           | mcbishop wrote:
           | Next level is showing virtual lines on the roof (to guide the
           | installation of solar-system racking) in mixed-reality / AR
           | glasses. EagleView supports that with image-derived
           | measurements... but they don't offer mixed-reality glasses.
           | So there are still people walking around on the roof with
           | tape measurers and chalk lines (which is time consuming and
           | error prone, and adds wear to the roof).
        
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