6 ms·
Crooked to the Millimetre
- ThouYS 6y agoSuper excited about all the new possibilities we have for designing buildings! Algorithms for the win!
- monkpit 6y agoCool idea! Took me a few scans to realize ETH is unrelated to blockchain tech in this article...
- iwangulenko 6y agoyes, it's the MIT of mainland Europe and stands for "Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich" or Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. Founded in 1855 it is older than the blockchain token!
- ChuckMcM 6y agoFun stuff! Master masons would 'tune' walls to specific applications (more load, better aesthetics Etc, and this can make that possible by non-masters. But more interesting to me is that places that previously were too cost sensitive to afford clever masonry might benefit. The canonical example in California are acoustic "freeway walls" which are block walls that line the freeways as a mechanism for minimizing noise in the surrounding neighborhoods. The "simple" way these are build tends to just reflect the noise somewhere else, and has some really interesting effects with low clouds. If on the other hand you could mathematically design an audio 'notch' filter out of the walls using a precise set of openings that would absorb sound and dissipate its energy into the wall, you could create much more effective sound walls. And if you could do this so that anyone working on the wall has a good chance of successfully laying out the wall correctly, then you could apply it to the miles and miles of walls that Caltrans builds every year. That would be pretty neat.
- jagraff 6y agoCould you elaborate on the "interesting effects with low clouds" caused by the walls? I've never heard of that before, sounds interesting
- hobs 6y agoBouncing the noises.
- ChuckMcM 6y agoThe walls on either side of the 85 freeway (as an example) in Cupertino have occasionally set up a resonance, which when the fog as come in over the Santa Cruz mountains creates spots where you can stand and hear very odd "oooh-waaah-oooh-waaah" noises. The first time I heard it I hypothesized it was a didgeridoo being played nearby, but you could walk 100 yards in either direction and the sound would fade, only to pick up again another 100 yards or so further away.
- wizardforhire 6y agoFun facts: Helmholtz Resonators [1] are used all over industry and in aerospace to do just this. For instance the shroud around a high bypass turbo fan will have a honeycomb sandwich layer with precise holes in the middle of each cell to create an array of resonators tuned to cancel out specific frequencies. My favorite application similar but different from what you’re describing from antiquity is the acoustical effect of certain Mayan and Aztec pyramids. Here’s a video[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmholtz_resonance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmholtz_resonance [2] https://youtube.com/watch?v=wsMGCF_pS-M https://youtube.com/watch?v=wsMGCF_pS-M
- IndrekR 6y agoThis reminds me the graffiti robot that was painting a wall of a 5-story: https://www.robotmuralist.com/ https://www.robotmuralist.com/ Also heard about similar robot drawing the lines to the pavement (can not find the link just now). I think similar technologies will play a large role in building, and maybe even more importantly, building inspection.
- arghwhat 6y agoThe mortar makes me cringe.
- cosmodisk 6y agoHaving done a little bit bricklaying during my years in construction and seeing adjustments being made after each visual hint,I can safely conclude that any reasonable size wall would cost a small fortune just on labour costs.
- lalos 6y agoI think the goal here is to lower the costs by increasing robotics- assisted tooling. So in theory, with time labour costs could go down or become feasible.
- mihaaly 6y agoMaybe it should be combined with something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Pj2GI6-xc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Pj2GI6-xc
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago> technology pioneered by the ETH spin- off incon.ai allows blocks to be positioned I had to read this 3 times to realize it has nothing to do with Etherium and blockchains
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mkl 6y agoWe discussed another company's take on the same idea last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20673723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20673723 Pretty neat stuff.
- Jolter 6y agoThe idea is nice, and the results are certainly striking, but seems like a stopgap measure. Assuming this involves making CAD drawings of every brick placement, that work should be done by an algorithm, with a human doing fine-tuning if needed. And of course, as others pointed out, if we know the exact position of every brick, the bricklaying would be perfect work for a robot. No need for a master mason if brick positions are decided by an engineer (or computer). Current-era economics will incentivize this transition (assuming the cost of labor does not fall radically and long-term): Using a robot may not reduce the construction time appreciably, but it would move the cost from a salary expense to a capital expense. Capital will continue to be very available in the low-interest economy.
- mavhc 6y agoWhy are all buildings artisanal hand crafted, one of a kind? What happened to the efficiencies of mass production?
- Gravityloss 6y agoI think the future of "AI" will work in unexpected ways. Computers will provide the high level instructions and humans will do the low level stuff. We'll be like police dogs. Robots are way too expensive. It will be a long time before it is cost effective to have stair climbing robots. With car driving and navigation this has already happened. Turn right here, keep on the left. A lot of the "AI" is just simple code, algorithms and statistics - and humans helping over some spots.
- quietbritishjim 6y agoThis is different from driving in that there's no interaction with humans (or even other robots) or unexpected obstacles. A human can survey the building site before work begins and clear it out ready for a robot to work in. Combined with the exact pre-set plan and the large number of fine adjustments needed, this seems like the ideal task for a robot. I can see your point in general though.
- Gravityloss 6y agoGood point. I guess if there must be a cage since the robot will injure any person coming close, including other people working around it, then that could cause some problems. At some points, large companies were developing robots that could work alongside humans on assembly lines etc since they had sophisticated safety features. I don't know if they ever were commercially successful.