
Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots - walterbell
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/03/07/upshot/bricklayers-think-theyre-safe-from-automation-robots.html
======
Spooky23
Bricklayers are already a dying breed... workers compensation makes it way too
difficult to build many structures out of brick. Most "brick" or "stone" you
see in new construction is some prefab panel glued to something.

IMO you'd employ more bricklayers doing trim work and operating the robot than
you do now. And we should move away from shitty manufactured wood, glue and
toxic treatments.

~~~
NullPrefix
>Most "brick" or "stone" you see in new construction is some prefab panel
glued to something

Prefix that with "In the States".

~~~
seanmcdirmid
What countries is brick still popular for primary construction? Japan is wood,
China and much of Asia is majorly concrete. Europe?

~~~
vincnetas
Yep. My house, and all neighbors around live in brick houses. In my country
people have this strange notion from Hollywood movies that if house isn't made
from bricks, you can punch though the walls with a fist :) And we also know
kid stories about tree piggies.

~~~
atonse
Even now folks in India (my home country) are always amused when they see an
American house being built. They say "it looks like it was built from
toothpicks" – and my answer is always "have you actually held a 2x4? Hardly a
toothpick."

I'm not sure about the structural pros and cons of wood vs brick, but from
what I've seen here in the mid-atlantic, brick is nowadays used more as a
decorative outside layer, rather than a superior structure (for homes at
least).

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olivermarks
Bricks are expensive these days, and laying them is an artisan art and skill.

Where I live in California houses are currently erected in days out of cheap
wood and cladding. As soon as it is feasible this process will be automated
and ways found to construct them more quickly using the cheapest materials.

We recently had some terrible fires where entire subdivisions burnt. Dozens of
houses burnt simultaneously yet the trees and cars didn't catch fire. This was
due to embers landing on roofs and getting into attics - the houses went up
like paper bags.

Making sure the next generation of cheap building materials are fire retardant
and robust is a worry given the rush for maximum profit for minimum investment
and wealth sharing automation brings.

~~~
corpMaverick
Does any one know why are bricks expensive ? It is just dirt. right ?

~~~
ytwySXpMbS
It's clay, and wood is much more abundant in the US. However, in other places
such as the UK, wood isn't abundant, so most houses are made of brick.

~~~
kps
The UK has a particular problem with a fungus that attacks lumber, _serpula
lacrymans_ aka ‘dry rot’.

------
monocasa
Reminds me of the folklore of John Henry.

He beat the steam engine in a steel driving competition and was treated as a
hero, but died from over exertion. The steam engine continued to work the next
day.

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dawnerd
Whats the setup time for a robot that lays bricks? If you've ever seen a team
of skilled masons/bricklayers build a wall, they're pretty freaking fast at
it. I imagine the time to transport/setup/calibrate/etc a robot would eat up
whatever performance gains it would have over humans - unless perhaps its a
really big job, but how many of those are being built these days?

~~~
Bartweiss
Fairly significant, apparently - you have to put up a scaffold alongside the
wall for SAM to work. (And presumably, you need firm, open ground to put the
thing on.) And they can't do corners or complex features, so when you hit
those you need to either stop the machine or move it to a different part of
the project. Headlines say they're 6x faster than normal masons, but that's
during a given span of operation; over the course of a day, with overhead,
it's apparently more like 3x.

That said, the machines are in field use, since masons are scarce and
expensive. You're right about the big jobs, too; they're apparently pretty
much limited to sites like universities and hospitals which have lots of big,
featureless walls. The Tech Review article about it is much more informative
than the NYT one here. [1]

I think this sort of automation worry seriously over-generalizes from factory
robots. Robots are spectacular at doing repetitive tasks with nicely-arranged
inputs and fixed workspaces. Hence, Amazon warehouses and Ford factory floors.
But (as the SAM people admit) outdoor, new-worksite tasks are going to involve
way more mixed human/robot tasks.

[1] [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/540916/robots-lay-
three-t...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/540916/robots-lay-three-times-
as-many-bricks-as-construction-workers/)

~~~
OrganicMSG
Ideally you want a small robot that climbs the wall it builds with a crane
follower being fed by brick fetching robots on the ground. If it was done
properly you could fit it all on a flatbed and have it cheap enough to be
bought by standard building crews.

~~~
Bartweiss
It did cross my mind that the one guaranteed "work surface" present when
building a wall is the wall itself. I'm curious how the weight situation would
work out, though.

On one hand, fresh mortar can clearly support several new layers of brick as a
wall is laid. On the other, common estimates suggest a 24 hour wait to reach
60% of final strength. How light would an on-wall robot have to be to work at
a steady pace without disrupting the still-drying brick?

The other question, I suppose, is whether the brick-supplying robot makes that
redundant. It's either going to need a scaffolding or a cart/flatbed that
moves frequently to keep feeding target that moves back and forth, and if you
need a ground-supported robot arm right near the wall it might just be easier
to do everything that way?

~~~
OrganicMSG
I was thinking that the crane robot would run along the wall behind the laying
robot and fetch bricks from robot hovercraft that move pallets of bricks.

------
bkmrkr
The replacement will not be laying bricks but new technologies.

Computers didn't replace human "calculators" by using abacus.

~~~
ballenf
3D "printing" walls and entire buildings onsite from epoxy, resins or other
raw materials seems the most plausible.

~~~
robotrout
I'm not an environmentalist, but even I would prefer we don't graduate to
epoxy or resin for home construction. These things are all petroleum based and
I have to imagine they outgas for a long period of time after construction. If
they do burn, they will also doubtless emit lots of toxic gasses.

I would prefer 3d printing type automation, but applied to compacted dirt or
clay. I love adobe and wish it was more popular. Big thick walls that keep out
the heat and the cold seem like a no-brainer, if you can reinforce them to not
crush you during earthquakes.

~~~
ballenf
Agreed, although we already have a significant amount of petroleum based
products in modern (US, anyway) homes: insulation (more and more styrofoam),
sealing wraps, glues over fasteners, flooring, and plumbing. Your basic
plywood by weight is a large part resins already, although no idea the makeup.

Maybe automation will make more "organic" building materials more affordable
or feasible.

------
Y_Y
Just makes me think there's a market for a better brickie robot. The one they
show is lethargic and built like a train. Even two robotic arms, working like
a human does would be tons more efficient.

(I'd also like to complain about the stupid title, but it's what NYT picked)

~~~
fastball
Why emulate a human at all? I think that's the main issue. There has to be a
better way to lay brick once you get robots involved.

~~~
bluthru
It's probably anticipating corners and arches, but for the majority of bricks
this seems quite inefficient. Bricks could be rolling off a conveyor belt in
to place.

~~~
tintor
Conveyor belt doesn't help, as you would still need an arm to take bricks from
the pallet and place them on conveyor.

~~~
bluthru
True. You could also have an unskilled laborer grab two bricks at once and
place it on the machine at a rate of 1 brick every 2 seconds or so.

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ohf
Clearly, SAM is a shitty robot. It looks as if it were designed by someone who
had no intention of using it to lay bricks.

~~~
Bartweiss
They're already in field use, and are apparently fine at it. They just do big,
straight wall stretches for things like hospitals. The "would lose to master
masons who have to put up corners in a speed contest" metric is a bit silly -
on non-corner work they're operating 3x as fast as the masons they're
alongside. No real risk they're replacing humans, but they do work.

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/540916/robots-lay-
three-t...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/540916/robots-lay-three-times-
as-many-bricks-as-construction-workers/)

~~~
dwighttk
Since they replaced journeyman masons there will be no new master masons and
once all the master masons are dead they'll have to do that corner work too.

~~~
Bartweiss
Fortunately, they don't seem to have replaced journeyman masons either.
Journeymen still do corners and other complex features, they just do it with
oversight. Rather, there's a shortage of masons at all skill levels, and so
far SAM is only cost-effective as a way to help fill that gap on very large
projects.

I'm sure that will change with time regardless, but I don't think it'll be
because SAM drove out human expertise.

------
thriftwy
When you see at brick buildings built 100 years ago, it's works of art. It's
apparent that amount of attention to detail is just not within range of most
brick layers today. Especially when you consider price point.

I'm talking stuff like this:
[http://www.etovidel.net/appended_files/big/4ea52a818bc08.jpg](http://www.etovidel.net/appended_files/big/4ea52a818bc08.jpg)

BUT, robots can change all that. You can render a wall on PC, with all mosaics
and tiles and all kind of super precise stuff, it will produce a complete
program for a brick-laying robot, which will then be executed up to a
millimetre. And it will also account for ventilation shafts, drainage,
internal structures within the wall to decrease weight, increase toughness,
heat- and soundproof.

~~~
UncleEntity
I'd blame Bauhaus (the movement, not the band) for the lack of fancy features
on modern-era buildings before I'd blame the bricklayers -- they just do what
they're paid to do and modern architecture doesn't call for that level of
detail in the brickwork.

~~~
usrusr
And it's such a shame that the radicalism of Gropius got all the attention and
imitation when he was surrounded by equally modernist architects who pushed
the subtle decorative qualities of brick to new heights. Even Gropius himself
is best when he puts brick into the mix.

------
jaclaz
An article with some more (past and present) "state of the art":

[https://www.theb1m.com/video/a-short-history-of-
bricklaying-...](https://www.theb1m.com/video/a-short-history-of-bricklaying-
robots)

using adhesive (for thermal blocks) removes a lot of the variables, to have
thermal efficient structure the smallest (thinner) the junction layer is, the
better, and as a matter of fact various kind of adhesives are already
replacing mortar in construction sites, with precision ultimately depending
only on dimensions of the bricks used.

------
oflannabhra
I think they are right, at least for a long time.

I'm not a luddite, but every time I hear people talk about how everything from
laying bricks to flipping burgers to landscaping will quickly become automated
I have the following thought:

Humans are amazingly versatile, and amazingly cheap.

If I'm making, say, peanut butter, automation makes sense. I'll put up
millions of dollars to leverage large-scale automation technologies (mixers,
conveyors, etc) because of volume and consistency.

The smaller the scale, the better advantage humans have, and will for a long
time.

Even if a burger-flipping robot existed today, it wouldn't have a great ROI
compared to the ongoing cost of labor. A restaurant just doesn't make enough
burgers for automation to be cost-effective yet. That is why most automation
has occurred at centralized points of supply chains, and why a patty that
enters a McDonalds is already the product of automation.

Someday, small scale automation technologies will have reached a low enough
price point, and an effective versatility that we won't need humans to lay
bricks or flip burgers. My bet is that occurs when the components (including
software) of such a robot become commoditized and modularized far beyond what
they are today.

~~~
goodcanadian
_Even if a burger-flipping robot existed today . . ._

Sorry, I had to point it out; the burger flipping robot does exist (though, I
don't think this really takes anything away from your point):

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43343956](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43343956)

------
sandworm101
It is a new tool, not any sort of replacement. There is much more to brickwork
than laying bricks. Show me a robot that can crawl under a house to fix a
cracked brick, or one than can shovel a trench without breaking something.

------
peterwwillis
Why aren't they using shims and jigs? If you want to line it up right, make
sure you have the right amount of mortar in the right place, etc, put a jig
around it with some shims. It's the easiest way to build anything precisely
that has to be done over and over again.

~~~
jpindar
That might be the easiest way for a novice to do it, but would it be the
fastest for someone who has experience?

~~~
peterwwillis
Oh sure, someone who's an expert may do it faster without a jig. But we don't
need more expert bricklayers to lay 9 bricks a minute, we just need more
bricklayers. By using jigs you simplify the process and make it easier to
perform by less experienced people, and make the process more reliable, which
reduces waste, which increases efficiency, which brings down cost, and
improves quality.

------
bmcusick
Bricklayers are probably safe from a robot that can perfectly replicate human
bricklaying skill. What they're not safe from is whatever machine-built module
that can be easily assembled by unskilled labor on site replaces brick walls.

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s73v3r_
So what are we going to do with the people who get displaced by robots? They
still need money to buy food and house their families.

------
0xdeadbeefbabe
Those brick layers (the human ones) look happy and healthy.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
You are correct. We should commission a study on brick layers.

Maybe the secret to long term health and happiness lies in mortar work.

~~~
titanomachy
Next up: voluntary labour camps where unhappy desk workers can go lay bricks
to gain better life satisfaction. Learn the same techniques used by real blue-
collar workers! $20,000 per team for a weekend retreat. For an extra $2,000 an
ornery foreman will come out of his trailer every two hours and yell at you to
get off your ass.

~~~
cr0sh
Considering there are already places where one can learn hands-on the
operation of large heavy equipment - your idea doesn't sound all that far-
fetched, and might actually be profitable.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
I did this in Las Vegas. [https://digthisvegas.com](https://digthisvegas.com)

I think $500 is too much if you have to pay for it personally, and I also feel
gross about paying to do other people's "job", but goddamn it was fun.

------
ricardobeat
Robots and humans alike are due for unemployment with our move towards pre-fab
and additive manufacturing.

~~~
dugditches
So the prefab parts are just going to put themselves together in the
factories? Then walk themselves to the job site? And erect and inspect
themselves?

~~~
fastball
Maybe stuff more like this[1]?

1:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUdnrtnjT5Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUdnrtnjT5Q)

~~~
monkeynotes
But a 'robot' built that house... Didn't you say prefab would put robots out
of business?

~~~
jsonderulio
Prefab robots with delivery infrastructure put local robots out of business.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
"Off-shore robots are stealing our jerbs; maintain me, puny human. EOL" /robot

------
jMyles
What a bizarre turn of phrase that bricklayers are "safe" only if they
continue to engage in their profession, which comes with a substantial risk of
injury.

Of course bricklayers will be _safer_ when robots are able to build houses.
Then bricklayers will be able to stay home and do as they please.

How have we come to think of the challenge of automating the matter of the
universe as within our reach, but the challenge of seeing each other as viable
individuals defined by something other than a "job" as unattainable?

~~~
ben509
Oh come on, commuting comes with a substantial risk of injury. People doing
work aren't victims, they are moral agents making informed decisions to pursue
larger goals.

~~~
jMyles
Of course - I love work. But I also don't think that it makes sense, in a
world of automation, to continue to define people by their work. There is no
risk of being "unsafe" just because our species has figured out a way to train
robots to do what was once your job. That's really ill thinking; the future is
much brighter than that.

~~~
s73v3r_
"There is no risk of being "unsafe""

I would say the risk of being homeless because a robot means I can no longer
afford my home means there's a risk of being "unsafe".

~~~
jMyles
I'm not sure how to make my point more clearly - that's exactly the part to
which I'm objecting.

