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Re:Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots by Y_Y on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @12:03PM (#16698845)
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)

Re:Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots by fastball on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @12:14PM (#16698958)
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.
Re:Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots by bluthru on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @12:18PM (#16699003)
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.
Re:Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots by tintor on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @12:54PM (#16699412)
Conveyor belt doesn't help, as you would still need an arm to take bricks from the pallet and place them on conveyor.
Re:Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots by bluthru on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @01:10PM (#16699589)
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.
Re:Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots by pbhjpbhj on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @01:13PM (#16699634)
How about baking a ceramic wall (brick or similar) as a whole, perhaps layered like ply? Or at least much larger bricks? Seems bricks and brieze blocks are sized to be carried/laid by hand?
Re:Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots by cr0sh on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @03:44PM (#16701167)
I'm wondering why they are using an arm with a gripper, etc. Quit emulating how a human would do it, and make a machine for laying bricks.

I'm thinking something like a robot with treads, that can move in a straight line (or maybe curves), perhaps at the end of a long boom with a conveyor on it that moves bricks from a central source.

It basically grabs a brick off the end, squirts some mortar down, and lays the brick. Make the bricks shaped in a special way so they interlock better and need less mortar at the edges (they already have bricks something like this; they almost look like lego). Then it rolls to the next brick position.

Once it gets to a certain point, it "crawls up" to the next level, perhaps by gripping the level below with the treads (the mortar will probably need to be some kind of "ultra-fast setting" stuff; possibly more like epoxy than mortar), and lays the next layer, being guided by the last.

I guess I'm just saying this particular brick laying robot looks like it was designed by an engineer who, back at the beginning of heavier-than-air flight, thought an airplane needed to flap its wings to get off the ground...

Re:Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots by Mithorium on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @12:27PM (#16699130)
I imagine something like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MKcTbYDP7w except for bricks
Re:Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots by usrusr on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @02:52PM (#16700619)
Imagine the smallest hexapod that could grab, carry and lay a single brick, then coordinate a huge swarm of them.

Or better yet: imagine the smallest walking/climbing platform that could carry a robotic arm just big enough to take a brick and pass it on, then coordinate many of them into semi-static bucket brigades for bricks and mortar that could form an ad-hoc power grid to solve the battery issue.

The main innovation tasks/requirements would be cheap volume production of the swarm elements and intelligent planner software to automatically derive a work plan straight from the CAD data (or else project setup/customization would be prohibitively expensive). The beauty would be scaling: need to build a bigger structure? Add swarm elements. Need to speed up the schedule? Add swarm elements.

Re:Bricklayers Think They’re Safe from Robots by singularity2001 on Wednesday March 28, 2018 @03:45PM (#16701182)
yes that's the one. where do you live? let's create a startup.