9 ms·
Bricklaying robots can now build tennis-court-sized walls in 4 hours
- airbreather 3y agoIn terms of lower cost of fast robotic construction I like the Italian company doing giant 3d prints of houses, if the soil is right they use local soil and leave a hole for a pond next to the house.
- TowerTall 3y agoI am not a expert on any relevant level, but aren't you supposed to put cement between the bricks? A little blow from the wind will knock down those walls in not time.
- defrost 3y agoThis entire comment thread is littered with discussion of the adhesive used, it's referenced here with a time mark: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37927990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37927990 and you can Crtl-F adhesive to find other comments.
- jeffrallen 3y agoHello, I'm just here to gripe about "tennis court sized walls". Besides being a stupid measurement (1 tennis court equals 260.87 m2), a tennis court is a horizontal thing, and is wholly unsuitable for giving the approximate size of a vertical thing.
- carapace 3y agoYes, thank you, it was making me twitchy. A tennis court sized wall made of bricks is just a large meta-brick. Whew! Cheers! That was gonna bug me all day (but I don't like to quip on HN, y'know?)
- seydor 3y agoalso it would make little sense to build walls around it
- drawkward 3y agoI can easily imagine the area of a tennis court, far moreso than the size given (in square meters, no less! <s> I live in a country that uses Freedom Units! </s>). Then, in my head, I can imagine what this area would look like as a wall.
- greggsy 3y agoI usually see high fences before I see the court, so it makes sense to me.
- chankstein38 3y agoI clicked on the article because I was like "What the hell is a 'tennis court sized wall'?" so maybe just good bait
- hef19898 3y agoHow much is that in football fields?
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoIt looks to be about 13.2 eagle wingspans in length
- LegitShady 3y agoJust look up the tennis court to elephant exchange rate. Simple.
- hef19898 3y agoI don't know the current tiger to shark rate, unfortunately...
- 28304283409234 3y agoHow are those vertical gaps between the bricks filled?
- infecto 3y agoI don't know AU construction but perhaps there is some sort of stucco that goes over top the block building both inside and out.
- jihadjihad 3y agoIt doesn't seem like they are filled with anything other than the "special construction adhesive" that's applied on the sides of the cinder blocks. You can see it dripping in the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPhRb2AF92I&t=78s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPhRb2AF92I&t=78s
- richiebful1 3y agoSakrete makes a surface bonding cement for building mortarless walls: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Sakrete-50-lb-Cement/3340656 https://www.lowes.com/pd/Sakrete-50-lb-Cement/3340656 I doubt that's what the robot is using, but it is a faster way to build block walls by hand. https://youtu.be/p_ZopnZ94Uc?feature=shared https://youtu.be/p_ZopnZ94Uc?feature=shared
- mrbgty 3y agosomething tells me that if the contestants that used the bonding cement had taken a mortar approach, they would have still finished in half the time as the other two :)
- richiebful1 3y agoI'm aware that it's a promotional video for a product, but in my own experience as a former masonry worker, it is still faster. And a layperson who is bad at gapping mortar correctly can get it right if the first blocks are level
- whitej125 3y ago
- _chu1 3y agoReminds me of South Park https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGmhLtsK2ZQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGmhLtsK2ZQ
- ChatGTP 3y agoCould be you one day...
- sdflhasjd 3y ago> The system uses a construction adhesive that's stronger than mortar and dry within 45 minute Notably absent from this demo. And probably a harder problem than just placing bricks down.
- jihadjihad 3y agoIt's visible from this video, at least: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPhRb2AF92I&t=78s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPhRb2AF92I&t=78s
- sdflhasjd 3y agoWhy don't bricklayers use this magical substance? If there's nothing to even out the courses, then unless your bricks have absolutely perfect dimensions, it's going to go all wonky quite quickly.
- easywood 3y agoBuilding glue is not magical and it's widely used, at least in western Europe. Glue is rapidly replacing mortar (just not for foundation and facade stone). Also, it dries a lot quicker than 45 minutes. A builder doesn't have to wait at all to add additional layers. And at the end of the workday, you just drop you glue gun, no need for lengthy cleanup of everything used to make mortar.
- dacryn 3y agomy house was built like this. The bricks had perfect enough dimensions for the small bit of glue to compensate Only for indoor bricks, wienerberger Porotherm https://www.wienerberger.co.uk/tips-and-advice/blockwork/how-do-you-lay-clay-blocks.html https://www.wienerberger.co.uk/tips-and-advice/blockwork/how... Very cost effective.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mordae 3y agoGlue is getting popular for ytong and similar already.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- defrost 3y agoWestern Australian robotics has been coming along since building a sheep shearing robot in the 1980s.
- nlstitch 3y agoSo it needs special adhesive, special bricks, special maintenance (Whats the lifespan on that internal saw if you have a lot of corners?) and it's only for the inner walls? What is the value proposition here?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jiveturkey42 3y agoIt's backbreaking work and there's a labor shortage
- mordae 3y agoIt's frequently done by nonprofessionals with some oversight. Usually the future owners. At least over here in central EU. Ceilings, roof, plumbing, electrical wiring, facade are way more trouble. Glue is getting popular anyway.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoBricklaying is a skilled job and key to the building's stability and durability... so remind me to stay way from buildings next time I visit central Europe...
- Swizec 3y ago> key to the building's stability and durability Key to the building’s stability and durability are the steel reinforced cement corners and support columns. The bricks in between, especially for internal walls, are just dividers. You could build them out of paper and the building would be just fine. Afaik you need the reinforced concrete part of construction for even small family homes for earthquake safety. Bricks don’t do well under sheering forces.
- ajb 3y ago
- amelius 3y agoI want to see a LEGO version of this!
- bluGill 3y agoInteresting, but I think that modern factory built panels - which are already in common use for commercial buildings - are the future. They regularly put foam insulation between two layers of cement so they are well insulated (or at least can be), and because they are built in a factory they can better control quality. A worksite can put panels up a lot faster once they get going.
- throw0101b 3y ago> They regularly put foam insulation between two layers of cement so they are well insulated (or at least can be), and because they are built in a factory they can better control quality. Not always possible: some locations need counter-measures against termites by building code, and insulated concrete forms (ICFs) have no/fewer options in that regard: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxJkYAA5jTU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxJkYAA5jTU Further, on shorter schedules, it may be difficult schedule a large concrete pour on short notice, so a team of guys and a portable mixer can lay block on an ad hoc basis on short notice. Blocks (cinder or other) also also often used for (small(er)-scale) retaining walls. The Essential Craftsmen channel has a video titled "Block vs Concrete" (where they used both for different aspects of the same project): * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ld9sIbkEJA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ld9sIbkEJA
- ensignavenger 3y agoI watched the video about the termites... not impressed. Obviously people in the area are using ICFs (which are a little different from prefabricated panels anyway)- and still getting building department approvals... so a call to the local building office to ask would be the smart approach rather than just to assume that it can't be done. Just because one company couldn't do it doesn't mean that no companies can.
- toomuchtodo 3y agohttps://www.icfmag.com/2017/09/termites-and-icfs/ https://www.icfmag.com/2017/09/termites-and-icfs/ https://www.nachi.org/icf-termite-inspection.htm https://www.nachi.org/icf-termite-inspection.htm Based on the facts presented in these post, I would be hesitant to rely on ICF where terminates are a peril. Concrete (formed or block) is simply a superior building material when considering resistance to termites.
- jf___ 3y agoits actually a hard problem: the massive boom that's required to provide reach is inherently quite unstable, not in the mm or cm but we're talking decimeters here. some of the core tech of FBR dating back ~15 yrs addresses this kind of dynamic stabilization. FBR is impressive and they've built decent an IP. [1] https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Mark+Joseph+Pivac https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Mark+Joseph+Pivac
- throw0101b 3y agoFor anyone unaware the significance of the name "Handrian": > Hadrian's Wall (Latin: Vallum Hadriani), also known as the Roman Wall, Picts' Wall, or Vallum Aelium in Latin, is a former defensive fortification of the Roman province of Britannia, begun in AD 122 in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian.[1] Running from Wallsend on the River Tyne in the east to Bowness-on-Solway in the west of what is now northern England, it was a stone wall with large ditches in front of it and behind it that crossed the whole width of the island. Soldiers were garrisoned along the line of the wall in large forts, smaller milecastles, and intervening turrets.[2] In addition to the wall's defensive military role, its gates may have been customs posts.[3] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadrian%27s_Wall
- paxys 3y agoHadrian's Wall is also the inspiration for "The Wall" in the ASoIaF series/Game of Thrones.
- ddmf 3y agoNae wonder I wake up feeling like a white walker at times.
- antongribok 3y agoThanks for that! This reminded me how as a kid for about a decade I used the CDROM burning software Nero Burning ROM [0] without any idea that it was a reference to the Roman emperor Nero [1] and the Great Fire of Rome [2] until my mom saw me using it and educated me. [0] https://www.nero.com/eng/products/nero-burning-rom/ https://www.nero.com/eng/products/nero-burning-rom/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nero [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Rome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Rome
- elthran 3y agoI also used to use it....and never noticed the pun based name until you pointed it out just now! Maybe I just think about the Roman Empire more now?
- btbuildem 3y agoIt's interesting to see the different forays into building process automation. I've come across a couple other brick-laying solutions, and a few 3D-printing-inspired ones (using concrete as the extruded medium). I do think the approach that is most likely to succeed would be pre-fab components assembled on-site. Some of the immediate challenges that the demo videos didn't show include the placement of headers / spanning gaps, and keeping the courses even / level. It's interesting they introduce some custom adhesive; I'm guessing because mortar delivery in that setup was prohibitively expensive. Interesting choice with the flat cinderblocks -- one would think for a method like this, they'd choose some type of an interlocking block, to make alignment easier and increase contact surface for the adhesive. I'd compromise on the saw in that case -- lose the dimensional granularity (eg have the wall dimensions be specified in 6" increments) but get rid of a complex component in the pipeline. These folks must have a solid business plan to have gotten this far - I guess the value proposition is lower cost than traditional building methods, coupled with 24/7 builds?
- bannedbybros 3y ago[dead]
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoSo what problem is this solving? I mean this and the concrete wall 3d printer are cute and all, but does it improve on existing building practices?
- barryrandall 3y agoIt makes for a nice demo. The hard parts of housing construction continue to be...everything inside of the exterior walls.
- lnsru 3y agoIt’s a solution to no problem. Outer walls were never a problem. The insulation and cabling/piping is. Paying for 3 days for insanely complex robot with a crew will not be cheaper than having 2 weeks a crew of 2 guys with a forklift/small crane laying the bricks.
- mikeyouse 3y agoBricklaying is backbreaking skilled, and often dangerous work -- and we're in a skilled labor shortage. This doesn't solve every construction problem but this seems much more useful than the 3D wall-printers since block buildings are going up constantly and there's no new tech in the building that would require certification, just in the placement/setting of blocks.
- debacle 3y agoThis appears to be done without mortar, on a level surface, inside a warehouse. I understand the allure, but 300 blocks an hour is the equivalent of 2 guys with some skill, and they'd be able to do it with mortar and rebar in an outdoor setting. Many of these technologies will only ever be profitable in a small handful of Western nations - building-block log homes, this type of masonry, foam formed concrete. Advances in building technology are about balancing pre-site prep with on-site flexibility. Stick construction is an advancement over timber construction partially because timbers are expensive and partially because it's much more flexible (and you can use smaller trees, and a bunch of other things). We use cinder blocks for construction now instead of bricks because it's a lot easier to transport large blocks in the automobile age, etc. A good advancement in building construction reduces labor cost with either new materials, new systems, or more pre-site prep. A good example of this would be SIPs, pre-site cutting of lumber (think an Ikea house), and integrated sheathing systems like the ZIP system. Replacing very flexible human beings with expensive equipment (that needs a human being to watch it anyway) tends to not save all that much money.
- shultays 3y agoIt says it is using some kind of adhesive
- Ajedi32 3y agoAnd the video on the page shows it doing it outside.
- cryptonector 3y agoAs others noted, this is working outside and with some sort of adhesive (about which one might want to know lots more), and as for a level surface, well, that's generally going to be the case in almost all cases anyways. That said this robot doesn't do rebar, and that's a big deal.
- executesorder66 3y agoFrom Wikipedia : The court is 78 ft (23.77 m) long. Its width is 27 ft (8.23 m) for singles matches and 36 ft (10.97 m) for doubles matches. In case anyone was wondering. Why is it so difficult to just give the measurements instead of some vague size?
- MightyBuzzard 3y ago[dead]
- karaterobot 3y agoThis won't put bricklayers out of a job, it will allow them to focus on the more meaningful and creative aspects of their job. [eye twitching]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tuatoru 3y agoThat picture didn't look like any building site I've ever seen. Edit: same with the video Where are the piles of stuff everywhere? And the power leads? And the saw tables and tools and ladders and trestles and scaffolding and... Nice lab demo.
- aesrtawert 3y ago> As for the final result, well, FBR's first outdoor test build as shown in the video below might result in some harsh words from an employer – take a look around the 1:08 mark, where the lighting shows some clear inaccuracies in brick placement. But given that this was literally the first testing and calibration run for the next-gen robot, we'll assume that's not likely to remain a problem for long. That's a bit too fawning for my taste. A more level-headed analysis might be "it might improve over time". NewAtlas tends to spooge over any new tech. That's their bread and butter.
- andjd 3y agoI wonder how this compares with just 3D printing in concrete, like Icon. It seems a little bit like putting a round peg into a square hole to have a robot fastidiously recreate a building technique designed around humans, whereas doing it in a way optimized for robots can be easier and more flexible. Kinda how roombas don't vacuum like a human. https://www.iconbuild.com https://www.iconbuild.com
- RC_ITR 3y ago>whereas doing it in a way optimized for robots can be easier and more flexible. Kind of like how Icon forces 3D printing onto the problem when re-usable concrete forms have ben used to build concrete structures for decades?
- m463 3y agoI remember I bought a roomba (first model years ago), and it didn't vacuum at all. it was basically for picking up crumbs from (some of the) the kitchen floor.