
Robotic Fabricator Could Change the Way Buildings Are Constructed - itamarst
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603429/robotic-fabricator-could-change-the-way-buildings-are-constructed/
======
ksec
I admit i am out of my depth here. Correct me if i am wrong.

I dont think construction needs to be made faster. I needs to be of higher
quality. ( Ignore the land issues for a moment ) You could built a 60 floor
Skyscraper in less then a month.

What we need is a much faster, semi / automatic way of internal renovation in
each floors. Door, Glass Fitting, Pipes and Electrical Wiring etc.

And all of these needs to be of high quality finishing. Taking into account of
Temperature variation, lighting. Making building with the precision level of a
Smartphone.

Even today, you could see building with Windows not aligned perfectly, floor
line running slight wide, floor not perfectly level. Or even Windows with
Leaking Water.

May be all of these are specific to Hong Kong, where we paid the highest price
per Square Feet in the world and get absolutely dismal quality of building.

~~~
oxide
My grandparents just moved into a new home, only after the deal was closed did
anyone notice that the washer and dryer water tap was built directly above the
washer and dryer electrical outlet.

I've never seen such a thing, it's basically the same as an outside garden
hose tap, installed directly above the electrical outlet.

that's not something I'd normally know to go looking for, so I doubt I'd have
seen it myself if I was with them looking at the place.

~~~
adanto6840
Surprised that it would be up to code and pass inspection really.

~~~
oxide
I thought the same thing. What can be done though?

They have a home warranty that's good til next year, but I doubt it covers
incompetence, and I don't think they could survive another move financially or
physically.

It covers shit like garage door openers (which was installed backwards, as we
found out after moving in) but we'd have to pay a service fee we can't afford
just yet.

The guy they sent out to help with our plumbing emergency doesn't give me high
hopes in who they'll send to fix the garage door.

The guy who built this place stripped it to the frame and rebuilt it with a
team of the lowest bidding crackhead contractors, from what I can tell.

------
jamestimmins
This reads exactly like a press release, especially the way it addresses the
limitations of the robot.

Makes me think of PG's essay Submarine:
[http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

~~~
djyaz1200
Thank you, very interesting essay.

"...I didn't realize you could write as candidly and informally as you would
if you were writing to a friend..."

~~~
jamestimmins
His essays are definitely worth diving into if you haven't done so already. I
don't agree with everything he writes, but I often find myself thinking back
to points he's made or just ways he looks at problems. The one on Schlep
Blindness is particularly insightful.

~~~
djyaz1200
Also good, thx :)

------
nerdponx
Why "must" it be connected to the Internet for the architect (or more
realistically the contractor) to make changes? Why can't they do it on site
from a console?

~~~
gravypod
Because then they can't get shafted by the company's crazy storage and service
costs and they'd miss out on a few bucks at the expense of usability. And I
mean who cares about that while developing? You aren't the sucker using it!

------
ape4
The photo kind of makes me laugh. There's the robot building this nifty spiral
rebar sculpture when we just want it to do some regular framing.

~~~
sparky_z
Spiral rebar layouts are very common in circular columns, especially in area
of high seismic activity. It's a bit more difficult to manufacture than the
alternative (evenly-spaced "hoops"), but it gives the column higher ductility
during a failure event so that the affected people inside/on the structure
have more time to escape.

[http://www.insteel.com/media/8177/Spirals%20Brochure%20wo%20...](http://www.insteel.com/media/8177/Spirals%20Brochure%20wo%20Back%20Page.pdf)

Edit: I have to admit, I didn't look too closely at the photo until just now.
That _is_ a weird thing they're doing, but I could see it possibly being
useful for fancy architectural columns, even decorative ones. (I suppose that
sort of application is where they're likely to find early adopters.)

------
VikingCoder
Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjcXJ8EU48o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjcXJ8EU48o)

~~~
LeifCarrotson
> It can build stuff using a range of tools with a precision of less than five
> millimeters

So a precision of 10 millimeters, or worse than that? Obvious lexical
ambiguity aside, I wonder what they're doing to drop the precision of that ABB
arm so far. It looks like it's built around an off-the-shelf IRB2400 to me,
which comes from the factory with a repeatability of _0.06mm_. 5mm might be an
approachable number to a civil engineer, framing carpenter, or bricklayer, but
it's not impressive at all in robotics.

Also, the Thinkpad T430 and W540 made me smile. So much more appropriate for
this bot than the Macbooks or iPads you see in so many videos.

~~~
akiselev
Can it still provide that kind of repeatability along all degrees of freedom
at full load though? Last time I worked with robotic arms (Staubli) the real
world precision was much worse than the specs claimed. With something as heavy
and imprecise as a construction brick, I wouldn't be surprised if there was at
least a few millimeters of wiggle room close to the edge of the arm's reach.
In my experience, the tolerances on parts used in automated assembly lines
don't have such high variability as those in construction (and this seems like
a very general purpose robot capable of some complex architectures).

------
idid
Interesting read. I question though the need for a robot: why don't we use
said sensing tech to empower Bob the Builder to "position brick within a seven
mm" tolerance, and have the added advantage of well honed human heuristics
judging a much wider variety of situations?

From personal experience, the constraints that robotic manufacturing introduce
in the design of an architectural object are huge: you end up designing
specifically for the affordances of these tools, to the extent that you
sometimes get nonsensical results.

