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  #1  
Old Posted Feb 16, 2009, 7:09 AM
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Construction robots?

Dubai has access to incredibly cheap labor and so does China. Not only is it cheap, but it comes in droves and it rarely makes the press when a worker dies in an accident.

It seems like the only way for the US and Europe to match such productivity when it comes to construction would be with robotics.

How feasible is it to construct a massive factory and start having robots turn out pre-fab sections for a skyscraper? Seems pretty simple to me, just have plenty of inspection machines and actual human inspectors on hand to ensure quality. It would be very similar to an automotive assembly line.

Now the real fun begins when it comes to actual assembly of the tower. Lots of human inspectors would be needed, but robotic construction workers could work all day and work all night. Not only that, but they could work as fast as the inspectors inspect.

The only problem, as always is with automating a huge industry, is all the construction workers who will lose jobs. A lot of new white collar jobs will be created, but not nearly as many as there will be construction workers laid off.

How far away is this technology?
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  #2  
Old Posted Feb 16, 2009, 11:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Krases View Post
Dubai has access to incredibly cheap labor and so does China. Not only is it cheap, but it comes in droves and it rarely makes the press when a worker dies in an accident.

It seems like the only way for the US and Europe to match such productivity when it comes to construction would be with robotics.

How feasible is it to construct a massive factory and start having robots turn out pre-fab sections for a skyscraper? Seems pretty simple to me, just have plenty of inspection machines and actual human inspectors on hand to ensure quality. It would be very similar to an automotive assembly line.

Now the real fun begins when it comes to actual assembly of the tower. Lots of human inspectors would be needed, but robotic construction workers could work all day and work all night. Not only that, but they could work as fast as the inspectors inspect.

The only problem, as always is with automating a huge industry, is all the construction workers who will lose jobs. A lot of new white collar jobs will be created, but not nearly as many as there will be construction workers laid off.

How far away is this technology?
Very little of construction work is repetitive enough to use robots. It isn't happening for a long time. There's also far too much on-site design/ on-site solving of problems that robots wouldn't be capable of figuring out.

Workers are adaptable to different tasks, robots not so much.
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  #3  
Old Posted Feb 16, 2009, 11:51 PM
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Having previously worked in construction, I can tell you that very rarely do you do the same exact thing more than once. There are too many variables.
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2009, 3:07 AM
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robots are used for very specific things and then even there theres still an operator of some sort
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Old Posted Feb 17, 2009, 5:27 AM
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Dunno about buildings... but really... some of those tunnelling machines are pretty "robot-like"

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  #6  
Old Posted Feb 17, 2009, 11:59 AM
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Not at all. The TBMs have a crew of operators and mechanics on board.

Complicated machine, yes. Robot, no.
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Old Posted May 29, 2009, 1:29 AM
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I think it is possible. Check out 5:00-5:45 where it talks about prefabricated skyscrapers.

Video Link
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  #8  
Old Posted Jun 4, 2009, 3:42 AM
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I think a huge amount of traditional professions will vanish in the next century due to automation.
This will be great. That will free people up to do professions that actually matter like science & medicine instead of repetitive mind numbing work that is a very inefficient use of human brain power.
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  #9  
Old Posted Jun 19, 2009, 5:16 PM
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Originally Posted by PA Pride View Post
I think a huge amount of traditional professions will vanish in the next century due to automation.
This will be great. That will free people up to do professions that actually matter like science & medicine instead of repetitive mind numbing work that is a very inefficient use of human brain power.
The question is this though: will there be enough jobs in science and medicine to compensate for a loss of manual labor jobs?

Huge amounts of money would need to be spent educating people because they can't just skip school and do manual work. I am talking about society at large, not specifically the construction industry. Society would need to re-organize.
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  #10  
Old Posted Jun 20, 2009, 3:45 AM
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Originally Posted by Krases View Post
The question is this though: will there be enough jobs in science and medicine to compensate for a loss of manual labor jobs?

Huge amounts of money would need to be spent educating people because they can't just skip school and do manual work. I am talking about society at large, not specifically the construction industry. Society would need to re-organize.
Yes you are right, education would become a booming industry because knowledge will be the primary goal of most adults.

My thoughts are this: What if energy becomes very, very cheap. Like there are major advances in solar power and everyone with a house can put panels on their roof and power their households for free. Now also imagine if machines/robots become powerful and cheap enough where they can build a big house for every family, manufacturing the materials on site using some kind of nanotechnology, all for a fraction of the cost of a modern day house. Also imagine advances in horticulture that allow families to grow their own food with high densities of nutrients & protein.

All of a sudden, living becomes very cheap and a large portion of the populace doesn't have to work 10 hours a day just trying to pay the mortgage, utility bills and feed the family. At that point most everyone would be free to spend their days learning and educating themselves and huge advances in medicine & science would take place.
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  #11  
Old Posted Jun 25, 2009, 4:13 AM
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I know that there are researchers in Japan working on robotic concrete delivery and forming systems, that would enable the construction of walls and floor slabs out of concrete with minimal human labor... In theory work could be done more accurately, more quickly and more safely... (dunno about cost though speed is king in construction)

IIRC, the system would be set up on a rig over a portion of the site (or the whole floorplate, in the case of a highrise), and a robotic arm moves around the rig, delivering concrete via a nozzle to a pre-programmed series of locations... The concept is vaguely like how a CNC mill or water jet cutter operates.

I don't know what it was called or anything, but I would presume that such a thing can't be too hard to find via Google.
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  #12  
Old Posted Jun 29, 2009, 3:47 AM
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Yes you are right, education would become a booming industry because knowledge will be the primary goal of most adults.
We are already seeing this happen. The industrial meltdown of the later half of the 20th century in the United States put a lot of people out of work and launched the United States into a position as the world's first "Post-industrial" society. Sure enough, as you predict, the children of the people who lost these jobs have rapidly taken to education as the only viable option. That's why our universities and colleges have been expanding so rapidly, its already become a booming industry here as people have realized you can't just drop out of school and get a $40 an hour job at a factory.

See this graph, if you look at the bottom black line, there is a definite increase in the rate of the number of people getting with college degrees around 1970, which would be about when industry started shedding jobs.



I would imagine that construction will eventually become nearly completely automated. I mean look at how quickly we can construct a house today compared with 30 years ago because of the advances in pre-fab technology. A house can be framed out in under a week now while it used to take up to a month to do the same task. Same goes for things like finishes (pre-fab cabinets) and concrete parking garages (pre-fab concrete slabs, beams, and columns). However I trust that our economy is flexible enough to rapidly adjust and become optimized for whatever conditions await humanity in the future.
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  #13  
Old Posted Jun 29, 2009, 11:54 AM
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some of those arcologies projected in the end of the 80s (Try 2004 MegaPyramid, Xseed 4000, etc) were projected with construction robots in mind. Actually, they would be impossible to build with human labor only.
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Old Posted Jun 29, 2009, 3:41 PM
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Sweet. Thanks for posting that.
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  #15  
Old Posted Jul 13, 2009, 9:25 PM
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Oh no!!

In recession, Japanese lay off robots

http://post-gazette.com/pg/09194/983564-115.stm

Monday, July 13, 2009
By Hiroko Tabuchi, The New York Times
KITAKYUSHU, Japan -- They may be the most efficient workers in the world. But in the global downturn, they are having a tough time finding jobs.

Japan's legions of robots, the world's largest fleet of mechanized workers, are being idled as the country suffers its deepest recession in more than a generation as consumers worldwide cut spending on cars and gadgets.

At a large Yaskawa Electric factory on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, where robots once churned out more robots, a lone robotic worker with steely arms twisted and turned, testing its motors for the day new orders return. Its immobile co-workers stood silent in rows, many with arms frozen in midair.

They could be out of work for a long time. Japanese industrial production has plummeted almost 40 percent and with it, the demand for robots.

At the same time, the future is looking less bright. Tighter finances are injecting a dose of reality into some of Japan's more fantastic projects -- like pet robots and cyborg receptionists -- that could cramp innovation long after the economy recovers.

"We've taken a huge hammering," said Koji Toshima, president of Yaskawa, Japan's largest maker of industrial robots.

Profit at the company plunged by two-thirds, to 6.9 billion yen, about $72 million, in the year ended March 20, and it predicts a loss this year.

Across the industry, shipments of industrial robots fell 33 percent in the last quarter of 2008, and 59 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to the Japan Robot Association.

Tetsuaki Ueda, an analyst at the research firm Fuji Keizai, expects the market to shrink by as much as 40 percent this year. Investment in robots, he said, "has been the first to go as companies protect their human workers."

While robots can be cheaper than flesh-and-blood workers over the long term, the upfront investment costs are much higher.

In 2005, more than 370,000 robots worked at factories across Japan, about 40 percent of the global total, representing 32 robots for every 1,000 manufacturing employees, according to a report by Macquarie Bank. A 2007 government plan for technology policy called for 1 million industrial robots to be installed by 2025. That will almost certainly not happen.

"The recession has set the robot industry back years," Mr. Ueda said.

That goes for industrial robots and the more cuddly toy robots.

In fact, several of the lovable sort have already become casualties of the recession.

The robot maker Systec Akazawa filed for bankruptcy in January, less than a year after it introduced its miniature PLEN walking robot at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

First published on July 13, 2009 at 12:00 am
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