Bricklaying robots can now build tennis-court-sized walls in 4 hours
newatlas.com
newatlas.com
[] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:19860910310NR_Rostoc...
The wiki article isn't exhaustive btw — there exist very common 9-story panel buildings as well. Also taller ones but those are rarer and usually tower-like (as opposed to repeating sections with separate entrances).
> The panel buildings called khrushchevka are found in great numbers all over the former Soviet Union. They were originally considered to be temporary housing until the housing shortage could be alleviated by mature Communism, which would not have any shortages. Khrushchev predicted the achievement of Communism in 20 years (by the 1980s). Later, Leonid Brezhnev promised each family an apartment "with a separate room for each person plus one room extra", but many people continue to live in khrushchevkas today.
Not always possible: some locations need counter-measures against termites by building code, and insulated concrete forms (ICFs) have no/fewer options in that regard:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxJkYAA5jTU
Further, on shorter schedules, it may be difficult schedule a large concrete pour on short notice, so a team of guys and a portable mixer can lay block on an ad hoc basis on short notice. Blocks (cinder or other) also also often used for (small(er)-scale) retaining walls. The Essential Craftsmen channel has a video titled "Block vs Concrete" (where they used both for different aspects of the same project):
https://www.nachi.org/icf-termite-inspection.htm
Based on the facts presented in these post, I would be hesitant to rely on ICF where terminates are a peril. Concrete (formed or block) is simply a superior building material when considering resistance to termites.
Pizza is a great example. We know how to get robots to make pizza (sorry, but DiGornio is not hand-made), we just long-ago realized that you need a pretty large volume of output to make robotics economical.
Until we get AI to the level where the robot drives itself to the site and collects/prepares materials on its own, centralized factory robots will always be the answer.
I also think a major limitation here is the boom itself, there's plenty of bricklaying done in fairly confined spaces. Between two buildings for example. Here one could just lower panels into a confined space with a crane.
> Hadrian's Wall (Latin: Vallum Hadriani), also known as the Roman Wall, Picts' Wall, or Vallum Aelium in Latin, is a former defensive fortification of the Roman province of Britannia, begun in AD 122 in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian.[1] Running from Wallsend on the River Tyne in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west of what is now northern England, it was a stone wall with large ditches in front of it and behind it that crossed the whole width of the island. Soldiers were garrisoned along the line of the wall in large forts, smaller milecastles, and intervening turrets.[2] In addition to the wall's defensive military role, its gates may have been customs posts.[3]
This reminded me how as a kid for about a decade I used the CDROM burning software Nero Burning ROM [0] without any idea that it was a reference to the Roman emperor Nero [1] and the Great Fire of Rome [2] until my mom saw me using it and educated me.
[0] https://www.nero.com/eng/products/nero-burning-rom/
The original icon was a lot clearer (Colosseum + Flame)
EDIT: I guess it really should be called "Burning WORM" (Write Once Read Many). That could have been a name for a rival software. A bit icky though, I suppose - and possible malware connotations.
I found this intriguing. The guy is probably in a lot of trouble, but Sycamore is an invasive non native species. In other areas people are paid to cut them down!
Then, in my head, I can imagine what this area would look like as a wall.
A tennis court sized wall made of bricks is just a large meta-brick.
Whew! Cheers! That was gonna bug me all day (but I don't like to quip on HN, y'know?)
Ceilings, roof, plumbing, electrical wiring, facade are way more trouble.
Glue is getting popular anyway.
Key to the building’s stability and durability are the steel reinforced cement corners and support columns. The bricks in between, especially for internal walls, are just dividers. You could build them out of paper and the building would be just fine.
Afaik you need the reinforced concrete part of construction for even small family homes for earthquake safety. Bricks don’t do well under sheering forces.
Actually, many skilled trades in the UK can make 50-60k a year, bearing in mind that these are technical qualifications, no university involved (whereas the system pushes everyone towards uni)
Romania used to have brick-only houses, but after a major earthquake in 1977 that is not allowed anymore.
Bricklaying is relatively easy, and it's a quick part of the building process, it only takes a couple of days for a regular house. I was looking at the robot, and an experienced bricklayer can lay the bricks just as fast, if you can keep the bricks and mortar coming.
So "relatively easy" has to depends on the quality and specifics of the end result... for instance, here in the UK, most houses are 100% bricks and visible ones on the outside, and the result is flawless (definitely not 'easy' to achieve) and lasts for literally centuries.
This has nothing to do with how difficult it is to learn how to lay bricks (insert ali g joke?) but more to do with capitalism. Paying apprentices £20-40 a day is a lot cheaper, shock horror, than paying a "qualified" brickie 3-600 a day.
Anecdotal I know, but family in the trades. I spent ~18 months* whilst doing my degree on the roofs, side by side with brickies on projects that range from single site, domestic, to 1500+ dwellings and commercial sites. A good 85-95% of them don't even have a GCSE. It's, still, a very much family business - at least in the UK. Connections will get you everywhere - most were pulling in 60-150k.
The main thing I learnt from the brickies I worked with, never mess with them. Even if you're in the right. They may look unhealthy, but jesus christ they're more than capable of throwing you a not insignificant distance. Going up a ladder all day, every day, with 24 bricks on your shoulder when your labor doesn't turn up will turn you into a beast - albeit one covered in fat due to poor diet.
*Weekends and 4-6 hours a day when the schedule allowed it. Site carpenters are just as bad. Most are bent as hell, very few take pride in their work. The housing stock in England is shit for a reason and it's entirely historic. Take a look at the city and guilds guides. Sparkies are the best and...that's not saying best.
Edit: Just watched the promo video, these are - special - breeze blocks. With a veneer? Stuck together with at best glue? This is going to be a hyperlocalised response to a labor shortage and wouldn't hold up to building standards outside Australia.
To an extent that's always been true I'll agree but it has gotten better and worse at times, when we where looking at houses I specifically gave more weight to stuff built in the 70's/80's over anything after that or before that, relatively new (for our housing stock) but built at a time when pride in work was still a thing.
As a result the build quality on my house is excellent (and I used to be a sparkie so I know a lot of the trades tricks).
The new builds we looked at had much better energy efficiency but god when you go look in the loft/anywhere that wasn't immediately visible was the quality dire plus tiny in comparison, 90sq/m2 for the same as we paid for a 4 bed 128 sq/m2.
If you have to stay away from buildings in Central Europe I'd recommend not visiting at all, you'll miss all our beautiful European cities built for humans. You'll have a better time on your 8 lane highways back home.
It partitions spaces perfectly cromulently, particularly if soundproofing material is placed in the dead space between the two sheaths of drywall.
Very much less labor intensive than stone or brick walls. And of course much lighter if it falls on you, in an earthquake or because a truck drives into your building or a military drone delivers an exciting present.
The "special bricks/adhesive" also doesnt seem to be a huge deal at scale. Every type of construction has its own speciality equipment (there are drills just for drywall, just for concrete, just for glass etc.)
Masonry adhesives are common
> special bricks
Where does it say that? The specs just say "blocks up to 600mm x 400mm x 300mm."
> Whats the lifespan on that internal saw
The blade or the saw? According to the marketing it "allows for quick change out of parts"
Some of the immediate challenges that the demo videos didn't show include the placement of headers / spanning gaps, and keeping the courses even / level. It's interesting they introduce some custom adhesive; I'm guessing because mortar delivery in that setup was prohibitively expensive.
Interesting choice with the flat cinderblocks -- one would think for a method like this, they'd choose some type of an interlocking block, to make alignment easier and increase contact surface for the adhesive. I'd compromise on the saw in that case -- lose the dimensional granularity (eg have the wall dimensions be specified in 6" increments) but get rid of a complex component in the pipeline.
These folks must have a solid business plan to have gotten this far - I guess the value proposition is lower cost than traditional building methods, coupled with 24/7 builds?
Notably absent from this demo. And probably a harder problem than just placing bricks down.
Actually, the unreasonably long boom arm is bouncing around significantly, yet the bricks are being place precisely independent of the boom movement. There's some nontrivial PID going on in that brick placement. Plus planning where to place the brick. Optical, lidar? This is impressive imo.
Only for indoor bricks, wienerberger Porotherm https://www.wienerberger.co.uk/tips-and-advice/blockwork/how...
Very cost effective.
Nice lab demo.
I understand the allure, but 300 blocks an hour is the equivalent of 2 guys with some skill, and they'd be able to do it with mortar and rebar in an outdoor setting.
Many of these technologies will only ever be profitable in a small handful of Western nations - building-block log homes, this type of masonry, foam formed concrete.
Advances in building technology are about balancing pre-site prep with on-site flexibility. Stick construction is an advancement over timber construction partially because timbers are expensive and partially because it's much more flexible (and you can use smaller trees, and a bunch of other things). We use cinder blocks for construction now instead of bricks because it's a lot easier to transport large blocks in the automobile age, etc.
A good advancement in building construction reduces labor cost with either new materials, new systems, or more pre-site prep. A good example of this would be SIPs, pre-site cutting of lumber (think an Ikea house), and integrated sheathing systems like the ZIP system. Replacing very flexible human beings with expensive equipment (that needs a human being to watch it anyway) tends to not save all that much money.
That's a bit too fawning for my taste. A more level-headed analysis might be "it might improve over time". NewAtlas tends to spooge over any new tech. That's their bread and butter.
Kind of like how Icon forces 3D printing onto the problem when re-usable concrete forms have ben used to build concrete structures for decades?
I doubt that's what the robot is using, but it is a faster way to build block walls by hand. https://youtu.be/p_ZopnZ94Uc?feature=shared
Ultimately these are the "bones" of the wall to which you afix stucco or house wrap + furring strips + siding on the outside.
Inside would be stucco (if in warm weather climate) or furring + insulation + wall board (if in cold weather climate).
In case anyone was wondering. Why is it so difficult to just give the measurements instead of some vague size?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37927990
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