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Ex-Waymo engineers launch Bedrock Robotics to automate construction
Company announcement: https://bedrockrobotics.com/news/introducing-bedrock-robotics https://bedrockrobotics.com/news/introducing-bedrock-robotic...
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- fidotron 1y agoThis will prove to be a strange business. Civil engineering is already a field where the very largest projects are done by humans planning and building the roads and bridges for the robots to move in (such as things rented from Mammoet [1] with extra control systems), but it does require significant human oversight (typically a metaphorical red button). It's all very one off and specific, and given how big those projects are that seems unlikely to change. The manufacturing of suburbs though would be a whole different ballgame. [1] Specifically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-propelled_modular_transporter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-propelled_modular_transpo...
- ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 1y agoDo you know anything about the current state of this? I think large construction equipment providers are already doing this?
- fidotron 1y agoApparently the providers recognize that there is significant growth in the complexity of control systems, and so there is a lot of fishing around for R&D funding on that side, however, being classic physical hardware people they severely undervalue the contribution software at that level makes. Most of the actual planning and execution work is done by the usual big civeng consultant companies in a very globalized manner.
- padjo 1y ago“executes work around the clock” of limited value given quite a bit of construction is subject to restrictions on operating hours.
- barbazoo 1y agoThink of any construction that's remote though. Especially infrastructure. Wouldn't it be cool if a bunch of excavators could just work all day and night to dig that trench, move that huge amount of dirt from one place to another? I feel like there are lots of situations where automation could be done.
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- brudgers 1y agoAt the scale where automated earth moving equipment makes economic sense, those restrictions often won’t apply. Highway construction and other vertically integrated projects are where this potentially makes sense. Operating hours are the least of logistical hurdles for most projects. Schedule coordination dominates and the critical path can only move as fast as the slowest element on it.
- xnx 1y agoIs this a scenario where offshore operators doing remote equipment control would be 90% as good as a US union worker for 15% of the price and could work in shifts 24/7 (e.g. for mining operations)? Sensor + control data would be great training for future AI. Jumping straight to autonomous operations seems expensive/hard.
- menzoic 1y agoGenius transition plan
- beau_g 1y agoI was thinking the same thing but the cost of an equipment operator isn't that significant compared to the expense of running and especially maintaining these machines, and if teleop incurs more maintenance cost or efficiency loss due to clumsier operation, it's definitely a step in the wrong direction financially.
- gdbsjjdn 1y agoI'm assuming for stuff like mining and oil fields most of the cost is having people on site to service the equipment, not just operating the equipment. You need the robot that can service the other robots, and then the robot that can service itself.
- bluGill 1y agoThe hard part with remote and automation is you often are in mud. Local humans are still much better able to run the edge of getting stuck. and if you do get stuck local help is needed to get unstuck.
- germinalphrase 1y agoThere’s a startup not far from me working on remotely operated construction machines. They explicitly are targeting terrestrial as well as space operations, but I would be curious if the communication latency to any reasonably close celestial object would require autonomous operation.
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- AI_beffr 1y agowhen its construction: jobs will be completely automated away. when its white collar: AI is simply a tool!
- adamredwoods 1y agoOnly the jobs that get to decide where AI will be used (and pay for the service) are safe from AI.
- AI_beffr 1y agoi think the obvious cognitive dissonance is mostly fueled by denial. it's acceptable for them to believe that the dirty blue collar people will fall on hard times. also they don't want to believe that white collar jobs will be lost because you can't use the "teach the coal miners to code" meme-think on it. turns out reality can be a little counter-intuitive sometimes. sometimes it can even be different from what you see on TV! wow!
- jschveibinz 1y agoIn general, the construction industry doesn't like change. This would be a CHANGE.
- moontoast 1y agoAutomating construction vehicles is not so much about safety (like passenger vehicles) but perhaps about labor cost and efficiency.
- bluGill 1y agoIt is about safety but you can put up a fence and then only allowed trained people inside. Which means you can say if you get killed it is your fault and the courts will back it (ask a lawyer for the books of fine print)
- taeric 1y agoI didn't think open field construction was hampered by the humans in the loop? Quite the contrary, I was under the naive impression that the heavy machinery was already largely doing the vast majority of the work. Even when operated by a human. Will be neat to see where this goes. But I'm reminded of some Amazon guys that were supposed to revitalize the supply chains. My memory is that that didn't work out so well.
- winrid 1y agoIt's interesting because the heavy machinery already replaced 20-50 humans. Now somehow that one person that has a job is an issue.
- echelon 1y agoDo you know how much California High Speed Rail is over budget? What if we could bring massive infrastructure projects down from the billions to the millions? Wouldn't that be a great thing for all of society? What if we could build new power plants, connect all cities with HSR, rebuild all our old bridges, add thousands of new skyscrapers, and do it all under budget? Think about what steel did for society. Automated construction is the next highest order step function change. It'll be insanely good for society.
- taeric 1y agoIt is not lack of knowing how to build rail that is keeping HSR over budget and never finished. It is lack of will. Largely driven from lack of direct need.
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- ecshafer 1y agoI think that more than physics the bottleneck for this is political (at least in the US). All of the local large projects around me are expensive because of massive amounts of red tape (environmental studies, zoning, planning), and political patronage systems. After the kick backs, political donations, promises to only work 8 hours a day, only use union labor, hire x police officers for y hours in overtime security positions a month, use xyz contractor etc. a small cost seems to be the actual labor and materials. Hell these robots if they work will be made illlegal.
- tippytippytango 1y agoWe need a silver tongued LLM agent that can align all these forces (and a well provisioned MCP paypal tool for greasing palms)
- matthewolfe 1y agoI believe SchemeFlow [0] is working on solving some of these problem, particularly with the insane reporting requirements. But of course, that still leaves the unions... [0] https://www.schemeflow.com/ https://www.schemeflow.com/
- esseph 1y agoIf there are no jobs, you don't need unions!
- dmix 1y agoThe unions will use their government connections to force the job to exist even if it doesn't need to be. They'll figure out a way to get a union driver sitting in an fully autonomous truck for some invented safety checkbox I remember Louis CK said he had a hell of a time trying to run his own comedy shows so he could offer lower ticket prices for his fans, but because every bit of the theaters were unionized it got really expensive fast and failed. They couldn't even touch the curtains, they had to pay a union guy to stand around all day and his only job was pulling a curtain cord at the right time. Which was some NYC rule.
- shorbaji 1y agoWith the construction equipment market at $160B, this certainly is quite a sizable niche. Specializing in it is clever. And an $80M round sounds sane these days
- xnx 1y ago> With the construction equipment market at $160B Wouldn't the value of their target market be the pay of operators (~$30/hour)?
- shorbaji 1y agoAt first, yes. Longer term, self-driving construction vehicles will likely change the entire market - perhaps similar to how self-driving passenger cars would change that market. Vehicles will be designed differently and consumption-based business models would potentially make up a larger part of the market. Investors are probably see that opportunity.
- barbazoo 1y ago> Bedrock Robotics is focused on developing a self-driving kit that can be retrofitted to construction and other worksite vehicles > Bedrock is “upgrading existing fleets with sensors, compute, and intelligence that understands project goals, adapts to changing conditions, and executes work around the clock,” I can also imagine this applying to all kinds of mining too, where there's already all the heavy equipment to mine and transport resources and we're just turning it into a robot so they don't have to employ a human anymore.
- consumer451 1y agoSo, comma.ai but for construction. That's pretty cool. Although as another user mentioned, right to repair/modify is likely the worst in heavy equipment. I wonder how that problem could be solved. Could something along the lines of warranty and service indemnification work, maybe? But really, an acquisition by the OEM might be the only way to make this work in the long term?
- torginus 1y agoMaybe it won't be necessary? Once they have the whole stack vertically integrated, you could just contract out the job to them entirely? If the excavator breaks, that's their problem, they'll bring another, you're paying for results not equipment.
- bluGill 1y agoIn some mines they are willing to pay more for robots than human labor because of safety (which is to say they know they can't make it safe enough)
- themanmaran 1y agoOne big barrier I haven't seen mentioned is all the OEM competition they are going to face. Caterpillar, John Deer, etc. already have remote operation vehicles. And a lot of provisions on what types of kits can be retrofitted onto their equipment without violating their terms/warranties. I'm sure this is already something they've taken into consideration, but it seems like this will be more focused on partnerships with existing OEMs rather than selling add on kits to current fleets.
- echelon 1y ago> Caterpillar, John Deer, etc. already have remote operation vehicles. And a lot of provisions on what types of kits can be retrofitted onto their equipment without violating their terms/warranties. Sounds ripe for disruption, then. If a startup demonstrates promise, VC money will flood in. Then it's just a balancing of economics. Is the new VC-backed method cheaper? If so, the incumbents will lose market share relative to the value prop.
- beau_g 1y agoTo the parent posters point though, those manufacturers are holding outsized control over what can be retrofit to their machines, so to disrupt them, you have to make your own machines. Working on and owning heavy equipment myself, I of course have looked at it and thought there's a lot to improve, but at the the same time, I don't really see where the big brain Silicon Valley + venture bucks ethos can be applied to the space, it would be a long and slow grind of doing mostly straightforward mechanical engineering and supply chain/vendor agreements to build something like a bulldozer, just to enter a near impenetrable market due to many existing sunk costs and long relationships between buyers and the existing manufacturers.
- bluGill 1y agoThe manufactures are aware of monopoly laws and will give you the 'key' to put your own thing on and even sell it - for a 'reasonable fee' which may be six figures and proff you will care about safety. Universities have got the key for student projects (under nda) disclosure: I work for jonh deere but am not speaking for the company. The above is all I feel I can say on the subject
- CharlesXY 1y agoDefinitely echo the concerns about bureaucratic red tape (looking at you, California high-speed rail fiasco) that kind of environment makes innovation in infrastructure extra hard. Still, there's something compelling about Bedrock’s approach if they can genuinely deliver a system that adapts in real-time to the complex nature of construction sites. The big question is whether they can win through retrofitting existing fleets or by locking in tight partnerships with OEMs, adding to that the competition is going to be pretty tough
- khurs 1y ago> is focused on developing a self-driving kit that can be retrofitted to construction and other worksite vehicles Seems sensible a project. $80m raised also seems a sensible amount. And the guy has a background in this field. Good luck
- hnpolicestate 1y agoJust nonstop putting people out of work lol.
- khurs 1y agoMost people don't enjoy the work they do. As long as the bills are paid then most people will be happy to not go to traditional work, but instead do more interesting/ of value to the community work.
- hnpolicestate 1y agoI pray LLM's put programmers out of work. You don't enjoy it anyway, just bills etc. Learn to enjoy gardening or something.
- khurs 1y agoWhat would a programmer rather work on. Some boring app for someone else, or an app to solve a problem he has of his own. What is more enjoyable, working on the language and database dictated by work, or whatever tech he wants to use. As long as a person gets out of bed and does a days work doing something productive in some way, it doesn't matter that it's not traditional work.
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- yunwal 1y agoI feel like most people who got into programming because they liked it (rather than for money) feel this way. I certainly don’t wanna be solving the same problems over and over again.
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- sumeno 1y agoOh please, the billionaires who control these things aren't going to share the wealth with the people they put out of work. They're going to suck as many of us dry as they possibly can "As long as the bills are paid" is the key point. They won't be because people will be out of a job with no safety net
- cbdumas 1y agoI don't know anything about this startup but this is definitely an important problem worth solving https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/us-construction-has-productivity-problem https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/us-construction-has-prod...
- halfcat 1y ago> intelligence that understands project goals > adapts to changing conditions The real play here is starting a business that specializes in getting construction equipment unstuck from the mud.
- cperciva 1y agoUnrelated apart from the words "rock" and "construction": I wouldn't be surprised if we see dry stone construction becoming very practical thanks to advances in computer vision and robotics. Dry stone construction is incredibly durable -- it doesn't rely on mortar which can weather away -- but it is limited by needing to reshape stones to fit together tightly (often by making flat surfaces). A human stonesmith can look at a handful of stones and find one which is close to fitting in the necessary spot; but a computerized system could scan thousands of stones and build tightly-fitting stonework with minimal need for reshaping.
- AngryData 1y agoAn interesting thought, im pretty wary on most automated construction techniques, but dry stone construction does seem like a good fit for automation. It needs to be done before any other construction is really done and takes a decent chunk of time even for a team of humans so not a lot of people or other things going on around the area or in the way. There are still some issues that need experimentation. You can go 99% of the way with fairly simple imaging, but that last 1% can be tricky and usually requires tactile sensation and probing and pushing on stones to get a rock solid fit, but perhaps the actual technique/style of stone fitting would alleviate that last bit.
- qrush 1y agoThese guys are going to learn a fun lesson about organized crime and labor unions in construction real soon.
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- cadamsdotcom 1y agoConstruction robots can’t happen soon enough! Eg. if bricklayers could talk to their machine the way we can with coding agents, and say “yep, wall here please, check the blueprints to confirm how high and where the holes for the windows go”, retired & injured tradespeople could choose to come back. Less injuries means cheaper insurance & better margins. People could work in multiple parts of a site by supervising several robots, and not be exhausted at the end of the day. The list of benefits to individuals and the industry is long.
- atbpaca 1y agoMachines will need humans, for sure. The question is how many? For instance, there is a company using printing technology to build homes in Austin, Texas. The target number of workers needed to operate the "printer" is 3, down from 10. So on the positive side, the remaining 3 workers will have a better work environment, maybe the costs of building houses will go down a bit, etc. In the other hand, 7 workers are no longer needed. My point is that the gains in efficiency will come with some winners and, in my humble opinion, many losers. And that will only help to downsize the middle class even further. Don't get me wrong, from a scientific/technological point of view, I am looking forward it. But I am concerned with the social impact in the long term.
- newsclues 1y agoHow many humans and where they are! Lots of remote jobs (pipelines etc) could be done with robots and satellite internet. If the maintenance and recovery teams can also be robots, suddenly lots of big projects could get done in very hostile environments.
- maxglute 1y ago>if bricklayers If legit construction robots were a thing they'd be primarily trained on assembling the most automation friendly cladding systems instead of wasting time laying bricks, incidentally why brick fell out of favor. Ironically a lot of construction robot explorations has been bricklaying / mason bots, but that's because laying bricks is computation and mechanically simple repetitive task not because it's an efficient building system. The benefit is we'll probably be able to build with bricks/masonry cheaper, the caveat being it will probably be relative more expensive relative to automation optimized building systems.
- brudgers 1y agoMy desire to believe in the technology runs aground upon the Conjunction Fallacy. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conjunction_fallacy To build a commercially successful autonomous bulldozer requires building a commercially successful bulldozer. That’s hardware and hardware is hard. Probably harder than the autonomous part because bulldozers are a century past the proof-of-concept era. My cynical take is this is financial engineering more than construction engineering. YMMV.
- xnx 1y ago> To build a commercially successful autonomous bulldozer requires building a commercially successful bulldozer. Wouldn't it only be necessary to put a "robot" in the driver's seat of any existing dozer?
- shorbaji 1y agoI wonder what fraction of the hardware goes into hosting the human operator and into ensuring their safety. How much hardware cam be optimized away when there is no longer a human operator?
- brudgers 1y agoVery little. All the reduction gears, tires, and hydraulics are the same. Basically you can get rid of the air conditioner and the seat. Most of the hazards related to heavy equipment involve hitting something outside the machine. Rolling is the major hazard to an operator and you still want to avoid that without one.
- kevinmpeterson 1y agoWaymo doesn't build cars
- poly2it 1y agoThey are also building a vehicle which doesn't have to adapt for a human, shifting the domain. Definitely not just complexity which is AND-able.
- iamleppert 1y agoI wish them luck, but I highly doubt they have been on a real job site, or have actually operated a heavy.
- kevinmpeterson 1y agoI'm the CTO and one of the founders of Bedrock. I was very pleasantly surprised to see the excitement from this crowd! Happy to answer any questions about us (and will look through the comment threads here). We're looking for really really awesome MLEs and software engineers, so if you're interested take a look at our careers page https://bedrockrobotics.com/careers https://bedrockrobotics.com/careers
- noosphr 1y agoAre you planning on using humanoid robots as drop in replacements for humans using the same tools?
- margalabargala 1y agoProbably not. They've already gotten the VC funding, so no need to sabotage their chances of success like that.
- kevinmpeterson 1y agoHumanoids will be amazing when they get here, but I think there are a lot of challenges between now and then - hardware alone is very challenging - add a ton of sticky mud and it’s going to be complex even if the software works.
- 93po 1y agoi had to look up whether stuff like mini excavators use control-by-wire/CAN bus or if the controls are actually mechanically operating valves, to determine how hard it'd be to just throw a lil computer connected to the CAN bus to autonomously operate equipment. it seems like newer and nicer models are control by wire, and older ones have joysticks and pedals that directly open and close hydraulic valves. i looked this up in a "cost of humanoid robot" versus just doing a retrofit on a computer/actuators on older equipment. i think even in the actuator approach, adding 12 electronically controlled hydraulic valves to replace the human actuated valves is still gonna be cheaper than a humanoid robot
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- to11mtm 1y agoSemi-shitpost, but Bedrock at this point has hit 'lazy name' tier for projects/startups...
- y1n0 1y agoSeems appropriate for a construction related company.
- ChuckMcM 1y agoI could see this really accelerating strip mining or deforestation in places where there either isn't a lot of local opposition or there is a favorable regulatory environment. It makes me wonder if Tinto is an investor.
- ripped_britches 1y agoBanks generally aren’t allowed to finance strip mining Deforestation is usually bottlenecked by major multi-million dollar equipment, not hourly unskilled laborers
- beanjuiceII 1y agobut they didn't even automate cars yet
- mNovak 1y agoFrom the imagery, they seem to be focused on earthmoving. Some cursory googling indicates an excavator operator can cost on the order of $1000/day (to the end customer, presumably less to an owner-operator). For some loose context, a slab-on-grade warehouse project I was distantly involved with a couple years back budgeted some $3.5M of sitework (includes other things than just earthmoving), which was about 10% of the total construction cost. Plug in your own longevity and uptime assumptions, but if that roof-mount kit costs on the order of $50k, it seems viable.
- achatham 1y agoAnd imagine a hypothetical project that's 75% excavation. It'd never be built today, but if excavation gets cheaper the project could be feasible. And then an explosion of underground bunkers and volcano lairs.
- stego-tech 1y agoThis feels more plausible for long-term success than Waymo for a number of reasons: * Construction sites are smaller in footprint * They’re more easily covered in sensor networks to support autonomous operations * They’re typically controlled-access environments, which reduces potential interruptions to automated routines * Since they have higher risk profiles than public infrastructure, the expectation is that workers will be more aware of autonomous operations and any deviations before they cause serious harm Honestly, I’d wager closed-site autonomy takes off before anyone nails national or global self-driving on existing infrastructure.
- whatever1 1y agoThe flip side is that they work with a lot more degrees of freedom (a car has just steering and speed to adjust), very diverse machinery and a ton more exceptions that need to be handled frequently
- stego-tech 1y agoTrue, but they have more freedom to attack low-hanging fruits and build capabilities in order of ease. With a self-driving car, there’s not a whole lot of iteration allowed - you have your capital to do R&D, but eventually investors expect that car to drive on public roads without incident or support, something nobody can do at the moment. For construction sites, on the other hand, you could (more) easily automate things like dump trucks or material transports using preprogrammed routes and manual triggers when something is done or needed. Then you can iterate on those systems to add more capabilities, more automations, more integrations with other equipment. Kind of like how tractors have iteratively improved over time because they benefit from a lot of the same limitations as construction sites. At least that’s my thinking on it.
- whatever1 1y agoDefinitely they can keep slicing the problem and deliver viable solutions within the boundary specified. I just don’t think that a single solution will cover the full suite of construction site machinery. Scaling will be tough. But as you said they will be printing cash in the meantime.
- Duanemclemore 1y agoI'm an architect. Well really now an architecture professor who (elevator pitch) writes computational tools to implement sophisticated geometries in advanced fabrication... That's all to say I want advancements in jobsite automation desperately. But it's WAY harder than people from other domains think. Imagine driving on a road while you're also building it while others are doing both around you too... These folks seem to be concentrating at the moment on excavation which (without looking) if I recall is already a pretty active and developed in terms of automation. But get out of the ground and you hit some pretty big issues pretty quick. To get a sense, heres's one of my go-to articles when people wonder about jobsite automation... https://www.construction-physics.com/p/where-are-the-robotic-bricklayers https://www.construction-physics.com/p/where-are-the-robotic...
- brudgers 1y agoConstruction is dominated by scheduling. The high bit of construction scheduling looks a lot like job shop scheduling and job shop scheduling is NP Hard. To the degree that is true, there are no generic optimization algorithms. But like all real world optimization problems, better solutions based on the specific nature of the inputs are usually possible. In the case of construction scheduling, relationships are the most likely route to optimization. You can dig all night long, but if the plumber does’t show up in the morning to lay pipe, your schedule is not improved and the plumber shows up in the morning at your job site because of the long term business relationship across many projects instead of some other jobsite. [I practiced architecture in the past. Everything takes as long as it takes].
- demaga 1y agoVery cool article. Didn't know there were so many attempts to automate brick layering.
- Sophistifunk 1y agoThe wasted time and money in construction comes entirely from two places: a small percentage of crooked builders (and their local council mates), and the bureaucracy that is trying to protect the citizens from same. Big brother puts in a lot of hoop-jumps standards and supposed checks and balances that end up creating massive delays and costs for the consumer, but the actual standards (while usually quite sensible) are easily sidestepped by the crooked builders, so the war continues, and the overhead constantly increases with the usual expansion-only government regulation ratchet. None of these things are susceptible to "AI" and other such automation. We have had prefab construction for decades.
- jmyeet 1y agoAutomation will break the back of capitalism. That's a good thing. But it's going to get very bad before that happens. There are a ton of jobs that should be automated like working in an Amazon warehouse. Automation can go one of two ways: it can make all of our lives easier or it can displace the workforce and suppress the wages of those who remain so those are the very top can have $250 billion isntead of $200 billion. Those displaced will be told to find new jobs and that will work for a time with considerable personal hardship for those affected. We've seen the impacts of this with manufacturing jobs being shipped overseas from the Rust Belt, for example. But at some point we'll start to run out of jobs for people to go. And then things will get very, very bad. I imagine a distant future where food is grown with automation, houses will be built that way, robots will pick up the trash and so on. This will leave people to find more meaningful pursuits. But this will require the ultra-wealthy to share and history has taught us that this will get bloody. Instead we'll face a future where companies will fail because there simply aren't customers because nobody can afford anything. I welcome less labor intensive constructions but construction is a significant (~20%?) sector of the economy. The potential for negative impacts from such mass layoffs is enormous. and as others have mentioned: there's a ton of cost built in that really comes down to corruption and overcoming NIMBYism.
- thelastgallon 1y agoFirst, real estate in US designed to be the sink for excess money globally gained by nefarious means, sell and make the money clean. Second, all the prep work before actual construction costs the same regardless of the size of the home. Its profitable for builders to build large homes (cheaper per square foot) and sell them at a premium. Third, zoning laws that make anything thats not a SFH mostly illegal to build. Fourth, manufactured homes are illegal in most areas. Finally, The building codes are localized to each county, there is no federal/state building code. As long as these perverse incentives exist, costs are not going to come down.
- nikolayasdf123 1y agorobotic construction is going to be big. 99.9% of what is constructed will be constructed by robots
- nikolayasdf123 1y agosoon you submit YAML and get something build in physical world
- svag 1y agoSo is this like https://comma.ai/ https://comma.ai/ but for bigger vehicles?
- OkPin 1y agoWhat’s interesting here isn’t just the move from self-driving cars to construction, it’s how Bedrock is betting that autonomy will take off faster in industries where safety, labor shortages and cost pressures already demand it.
- tartoran 1y agoSafety becomes a non issue when no humans are involved.
- pilaf 1y agoThis is tangential, but I recommend Katsushiro Otomo's (of Akira fame) dystopian take on large-scale automated construction, the short movie Construction Cancellation Order, part of an anthology known in the west as Neo Tokyo[1], released in 1987 (Akira was released in 1988). I won't link to it here, but it seems someone uploaded it to archive.org (most likely illegally). 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Tokyo_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Tokyo_(film)
- skatanski 1y agoThis to me vibes with the world of manga Blame by Tsutomu Nihei. In it large automata, have been building the mega structure long after biological humans are gone. The structure already encompasses the moon, and they are still building. Cool concept, which goes well together with the architecture background of the author.
- beskababan 1y agoTy
- mycatisblack 1y agoNear-topic: does anyone know of automated deconstruction attempts? i.e. dented car goe in one end, parts come out the other?
- lnsru 1y agoI love science fiction, so I could imagine decomposition machine where dented car goes in and buckets with rubber/plastic/steel/copper/aluminium/glass come out. Identify materials and cut them piece by piece should be doable. Identifying individual greasy parts and removing them maybe in 25 years.
- PicassoCTs 1y agoLooked at the linkedIn career paths in the profiles. Nobody there worked in construction before this. They may have hired some domain experts, but i doubt they will get it together. Especially, as automated construction has very little to do with "copy human" constructors and replicate and all todo with abstract the environment away and get it done. Meaning, you will want classic autonomy with excavators and trucks and concrete trucks - until you have poured the base plate for a house. Then the best approach still is, to have basically a factory for pre-built components and assemble them on site. The "doing constructor things" with machines on site- does not scale.
- ironman1478 1y agoI'm skeptical of the plan to provide a "kit" that can be put on arbitrary construction vehicles. I think Cruise tried something similar with personal vehicles and quickly learned it really could only build a system for a specific vehicle. There are tons of complexities associated with mounting of sensors and interfacing with the vehicle specific control systems. Not saying it can't be done, but I wouldn't be surprised if the company has to pivot to supporting a subset of their goal and then gets bought out by some larger company to work on their line of construction vehicles.
- poly2it 1y agoIt might be easier to collaborate with an established producer of a specific vehicle and create a partially custom vehicle from the same "car platform".
- foobiekr 1y agoIt is not. These companies are actively hostile to this sort of thing and with good reason: muddy liability in a context where people can be injured, maimed, crippled and killed. The “add on” thing belongs in he list of tarpit ideas. Watching Cruise and Ghost Automation flail about for years vaporizing cash trapped on this idea was like watching a comedy.
- ironman1478 1y agoWaymo did it successfully with the Jaguars. I think the idea is that the VC environment isn't conducive to this type of work (I worked for Cruise). The companies grew too big too fast b/c they need to show results to investors. This forced them to invest in custom hardware before they even knew how to solve many of the fundamental problems and got their software stack in order. Waymo got away with what they did b/c they stayed focused and didn't grow too big, but they could only do that because they had Google to finance them.
- foobiekr 1y agoWaymo didn’t do it for anyone else’s gear. They own it all. The liability is all on Waymo. Traffic laws are a hell of a lot more lax than the situation around on the job injuries.
- poly2it 1y agoIs this site built in some futuristic new framework? Why does it not allow scrolling at an adaptable speed on mobile?
- augustuswest 1y ago[dead]
- AndyMcConachie 1y agoThere are already so many specialized machines in construction. When I was a kid I thought we needed exo-skeletons. Then I watched modern construction happen and realized we already have all these wild Bobcat like machines doing all the heavy lifting that humans have done in the past. I guess it's cheaper to use a computer to drive a Bobcat than a human driver. But I wonder if the cost is worth the loss in immediate knowledge and speed. There's no way a computer is going to be faster than a human while also being safe. So I have my doubts.
- amelius 1y agoI'm still waiting for a robot that can put a LEGO model together, given nothing but the bricks and the instruction booklet.
- Aeroi 1y agoI've been building a voice+vision AI assistant for tradesman, industrial services, and DIY consumers the last 8 months. It streams vision+voice+text+spatial data to a multimodal llm, to help users solve problems on the job. Basically a "Cursor" for tradesman. Most of my work now has been figuring out what to put in the context window, when, and how to provide the best deterministic response. This assistant is a bridge between where we are now (little to no tech for these guys) and where the future will be (robotic automation). I think the in between stage will be a significantly longer timeframe than people realize, and I hope my app can provide value to these guys while they work. www.camerasearch.ai
- xnx 1y agoLook like Caterpillar has been doing some of this too: https://www.cat.com/en_US/news/machine-press-releases/caterpillar-and-luck-stone-celebrate-one-million-tons-hauled-autonomously-at-bull-run-quarry.html https://www.cat.com/en_US/news/machine-press-releases/caterp...
- 1970-01-01 1y agoAn old idea for colonization of the solar system is to create a self-replicating machine that just goes and carves out settlements for settlers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Von_Neumann_probes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...
- cstanley 1y agoDid these guys just kill their QSBS status by raising 80m instead of 75? Cool idea, but a lot cooler to be able to attract talent with QSBS stock
- kulasjana 1y ago[dead]