Window Washing a Skyscraper Is Beyond a Robot's Reach 203
HughPickens.com writes "Patrick McGeehan writes in the NYT that the image of a pair of window washers clinging to a scaffold dangling outside the 68th floor of 1 World Trade Center have left many wondering why robots can't rub soapy water on glass and wipe it off with a squeegee relieving humans of the risk of injury, or death, from a plunge to the sidewalk? The simple answer, several experts say, is that washing windows is something that machines still cannot do as well as people can. "Building are starting to look like huge sculptures in the sky," says Craig Caulkins. "A robot can't maneuver to get around those curves to get into the facets of the building." According to Caulkins robotic cleaning systems tend to leave dirt in the corners of the glass walls that are designed to provide panoramic views from high floors. "If you are a fastidious owner wanting clean, clean windows so you can take advantage of that very expensive view that you bought, the last thing you want to see is that gray area around the rim of the window."
Another reason for the sparse use of robots is that buildings require a lot more maintenance than just window cleaning. Equipment is needed to lower people to repair facades and broken windows, like the one that rescue workers had to cut through with diamond cutters to rescue the window washers. For many years, being a window cleaner in Manhattan was regarded as one of the most dangerous occupations in the world: by 1932, an average of one in every two hundred window cleaners in New York was killed each year. Now all new union window cleaners now take two hundred and sixteen hours of classroom instruction, three thousand hours of accredited time with an employer and their union makes sure workers follow rigorous safety protocols. In all, there are about 700 scaffolds for window washing on buildings in New York City, says union representative Gerard McEneaney. His members are willing to do the work because it pays well: as much $26.89 an hour plus benefits. Many of the window cleaners are immigrants from South America. "They're fearless guys, fearless workers."
Another reason for the sparse use of robots is that buildings require a lot more maintenance than just window cleaning. Equipment is needed to lower people to repair facades and broken windows, like the one that rescue workers had to cut through with diamond cutters to rescue the window washers. For many years, being a window cleaner in Manhattan was regarded as one of the most dangerous occupations in the world: by 1932, an average of one in every two hundred window cleaners in New York was killed each year. Now all new union window cleaners now take two hundred and sixteen hours of classroom instruction, three thousand hours of accredited time with an employer and their union makes sure workers follow rigorous safety protocols. In all, there are about 700 scaffolds for window washing on buildings in New York City, says union representative Gerard McEneaney. His members are willing to do the work because it pays well: as much $26.89 an hour plus benefits. Many of the window cleaners are immigrants from South America. "They're fearless guys, fearless workers."
A cost equation (Score:5, Insightful)
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since there are no such robots, yes. The "self-cleaning" glass does need hosed down every now and then, not totally self-cleaning
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freezing rain and snow might make a mess too
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and here in chicago sometimes the moon is brown or orange because of pollution. I'd wonder how well the glass does in rain passing through fumes of oil, unburned gasoline ,coal ash, industrial solvents, etc.
wonder if I have the lungs of a smoker from all that shit, though I've never taken one puff....
Re:A cost equation (Score:5, Interesting)
Cost seems like a good explanation. I have no idea how long it takes to wash an entire building, but at the pay rate quoted in the story they could employ two guys for a whole year for under $300,000. A really good machine would probably be a million dollars to design and implement and would still need maintenance and probably a full-time guy to operate it.
I find it hard to believe there isn't a technological solution to this that could limit exterior manual cleaning to something done every couple of years. The idea that some machine used on the old World Trade Center sucked seems like a weak excuse -- a car from the early 70s sucks now, too, compared to current cars employing modern technology.
Some ideas off the top of my head:
1) A self-contained pressure washing system that recycles its own water with some combination of sheeting chemistry, forced air and microfiber to ensure the window is clean. Hard to believe you can't design a machine capable of cleaning well.
2) Why not integrate a cleaning system into the window framing or structural system capable of washing either a bank of windows or several vertical floor sections? It might need fixing itself, but it could be combined with once-every-five years exterior maintenance and "thorough" cleaning.
3) Are there coatings or other materials science solutions that would make dirt and pollution less likely to stick to the windows and make cleaning necessary only every 5 years or when exterior maintenance was necessary?
Re:A cost equation (Score:5, Informative)
https://lakepointtower.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/doing-the-windows-at-lake-point-tower/#more-461 [wordpress.com]
Here is a terribly done youtube video [youtube.com] that purports to show the machine and process (but...well...let's just say he isn't a very good cameraman). Of course, it is a design that is fully integrated with the building. I worked in the building for a while and I always found the windows to be quite clean. Better than other buildings because they could clean the windows more often. You need tracks running down the edges of all of the winows, so you couldn't retrofit this onto an old building...but this problem does seem solvable for new constructions.
Significantly more complicated for old buildings. I am in a ~100 year old brick and stone facade building. The windows are inset, and not uniform in size, They have window sills and some of them are divided into multiple panes while other areas have bigger sheets of glass. I don't know how a machine would manage this...and having a custom machine might make sense for a large condo building (pretty sure the lake point tower cleaner robots are running most of the time since they have 70 stories of wall-to-wall windows to clean), but a custom machine for a shorter office building with limited windows is not going to be more effective than having a couple guys scrub the windows every few weeks.
Here, the guys that clean the windows actually rappel down. I think a lot of older buildings have too much stuff sticking out (and the windows are more spaced out), so having a hanging scaffold doesn't make sense. Instead, they just harness in and kick themselves around the building, using a suction cup to hold themselves in place while they clean a window. Incredibly fast and even considering they get paid pretty well, incredibly cheap.
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You could always design the building in the first place to minimize those nooks and crannys that a robot couldn't reach. That is way too practical of a solution though and would never catch on so long as the people inside need a way to show off all their money.
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Or you could read the summary and figure out one of the real reasons:
Another reason for the sparse use of robots is that buildings require a lot more maintenance than just window cleaning.
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And on top of that - it would probably be a custom solution. (Meaning expensive to maintain, and very expensive to replace when it could no longer be ma
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Not necessarily. An office with a "very expensive view" is a status symbol. So is a servant. Just like having an automaton wash your windows appeals to a certain kind of personality, having an actual human being do so appeals to another.
People who only care about the cost don't rent offices in skyscrapers and if they would, they'd just let the windows stay dirty.
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True, but people that care about having a large pool of workers to hire and close proximity to as many clients as possible tend to want offices downtown. Downtown is full of skyscrapers in order to house as many a commuters as possible during working hours. So many people rent a space with a "very expensive view" even though they don't care about it as a status symbol.
Reading comprehension. (Score:2)
Human window washers must be cheaper than self-cleaning glass or robots. For now.
high rise architecture as sculpture
difficult to navigate, no longer a simple curtain wall.
demands cleaning, maintenance and repair of both windows and facades -- and tenants will settle for nothing less than perfection.
there are no robots who can do this work and that isn't going to change any time soon.
it's all there in the summary.
For comparison, the twin towers of the WTC had 43,600 windows --- over 600,000 square feet of glass. The World Trade Center - Facts and Figures [nysed.gov]
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But, he is correct. This has nothing to do with politics. It is only a matter of time, 15-20 years tops, until robots will be doing this. They will do it faster and cheaper than people can. And believe you me, I'm a proponent of putting people out of work. The technology to do this shouldn't be that complicated, and sooner or later, just like self driving cars, it will happen..
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I'm gonna guess you're a libertarian on the basis that you ignore the actual reasons things happen
What's your working definition of what a libertarian is?
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You're a major jerk. Why don't you just take a week away from slashdot and go out and take in some fresh air?
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Did you make sure his hall pass is valid for today?
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Probably not but the real question is did he check his bridge pass?
As he clearly walked over a troll bridge.
Re:A cost equation (Score:5, Insightful)
You could make a robot competent for the job, but it would be much more expensive than a person. That won't always be true however. That's my point.
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My guess is that the article provides part of the answer. The need to have scaffolding (and employees) anyways
to do repairs and other tasks so you already have the sunk cost of the scaffolding so the robot would have to be
considerably cheaper or be able to use the existing scaffolding.
As that glass is extremely think and presumable durable, I personally don't understand why a cheap roomba
outfitted with pressure washer (and something to catch the water) couldn't do the job.
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I'm guessing that we would have the technical ability, we just haven't put enough time and money into developing it, since there is no great payoff at the end.
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...or maybe this article is trying to inspire that effort?
Given the current state of robotics and AI this challenge seems entirely doable. It's possible some entrepreneur hasn't decided to build a company around it yet and the Universities haven't found it interesting enough for a research project. I think the $ is there (You have an entire world filled with sky scrapers you just need the cost including maintenance to be better over time than the cleaners.
Start in Vegas (or Dubai) where they are willing to
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Seconded! That's why I'm all about striving towards an energy-production-derived basic income for all citizens (ideally all humans)
Anything else seems like a 1-way-ticket to Turmoil Town.
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Which fails to address the point that most of their job is doing maintenance work not the window washing.
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I would bet that even when robotics are good enough a down armoured IronMan suit would be cheaper (even if its IM and a flock of drones).
It seems like squeegeeing is the wrong approach (Score:5, Interesting)
For a human, using a sponge and squeegee combo is probably the most effective way to clean a window. For a robot, I would imagine that the answer is something more like a pressure washer, with a hood which covers the work area and reclaims the wash water. The water would then be filtered and reused until the particulate count rose too high, at which point it would be flushed and replaced with fresh. A sheeting additive would be used to cause the water to run off without spotting.
This probably wouldn't replace human window washing entirely, but it seems like it has the potential to replace at least some of the washes.
I've often wondered if anyone has ever tried a project to make a building which washes itself, using a robot designed for the building, and a building designed for the robot. I can imagine many problems with such a project without even undertaking it, mostly related to critters taking up residence in the mechanisms and/or tracks, but if it operated continuously that might well eliminate some of those objections. A universal window washing robot has a more complicated task than such a device would.
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For a human, using a sponge and squeegee combo is probably the most effective way to clean a window. For a robot, I would imagine that the answer is something more like a pressure washer, with a hood which covers the work area and reclaims the wash water. The water would then be filtered and reused until the particulate count rose too high, at which point it would be flushed and replaced with fresh. A sheeting additive would be used to cause the water to run off without spotting.
This probably wouldn't replace human window washing entirely, but it seems like it has the potential to replace at least some of the washes.
I've often wondered if anyone has ever tried a project to make a building which washes itself, using a robot designed for the building, and a building designed for the robot. I can imagine many problems with such a project without even undertaking it, mostly related to critters taking up residence in the mechanisms and/or tracks, but if it operated continuously that might well eliminate some of those objections. A universal window washing robot has a more complicated task than such a device would.
Did you even read the article? You'll find it discusses how the old World Trade Center Towers had built in devices that were made specifically for the building that would automatically go up and down cleaning it. The only problem was they missed the corners and creases of each pane and the rich people at the top of the building didn't want the grimy borders to their new expensive view of NYC.
It sounds like you have a lot of ideas for building a nice big heavy expensive machine that moves up and down
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Did you even read the article?
YMBNH
You'll find it discusses how the old World Trade Center Towers had built in devices that were made specifically for the building that would automatically go up and down cleaning it. The only problem was they missed the corners and creases of each pane and the rich people at the top of the building didn't want the grimy borders to their new expensive view of NYC.
That seems like a solvable problem, in a variety of ways. The easiest would be to add a window border on the inside of the glass that covers up the area that doesn't get cleaned, but actually solving the problem also seems doable.
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That seems like a solvable problem, in a variety of ways. The easiest would be to add a window border on the inside of the glass that covers up the area that doesn't get cleaned, but actually solving the problem also seems doable.
Hmm... I would say it is a work around, not a solution to the problem. Why? Because the dirt is still there. your suggestion would simply hide the dirtiness from seeing rather is a way to clean it (solution)...
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Hmm... I would say it is a work around, not a solution to the problem. Why? Because the dirt is still there. your suggestion would simply hide the dirtiness from seeing rather is a way to clean it (solution)...
Dirt on painted surfaces is a problem. It traps more dirt, it traps grease, it traps water and holds it against the surface. Dirt on glass is only a problem insofar as it impedes visibility. If nobody sees it, it isn't a problem. This technique is already used in the case of your car's windshield, and it works quite well. We're talking about only a small percentage of the total area of the window.
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The problem isn't dirt on the windows (Score:2)
The problem isn't dirt on the windows, the dirt doesn't affect the performance of the building in any meaningful way. The non-window areas don't need to be cleaned spotless, because the occupants can't see them. The GP's post provides the most economical solution - masking to avoid the appearance of the problem.
Consider this is a solution which has been done for ages in the area of movie projections and photography: no lens can make a perfectly rectangular, evenly lit, properly focused area on a flat surfac
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Worse, it seems to also add "...and everybody has a financial stake in the current system, too"
It read to me like "I rode in a car once 40 years ago, and it sucked. Cars don't work well."
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This isn't a mechanical problem, it is a vision problem. Humans miss spots while cleaning all the time, but we have one advantage, we can easily tell what is and isn't dirty, then we go back and correct. The issue I see is we aren't solving the vision and object recognition problem for some time yet so humans will still have that advantage.
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yet google can develop self driving cars.
I think we could implement AI/pattern recognition that could do it. It's more an economics question for the reasons you just listed. 26ish bucks an hour vs multi-million dollar machine, and the R&D needed to develop it..
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Until human life is A LOT more expensive, or robot solutions are a lot cheaper, it will be cost effective to skinsource menial but complex and dangerous jobs.
We like to pay lipservice to all kinds of factors, but it all comes down to money.
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A loss is still expensive, and it does increase rates as I described.
Source: For the last decade I have coded an
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The insurance company is supposed to be clever enough to work it all out and then charge you a flat rate of $XXX per person per year per building, or whatever rate is applicable. The price may change over time with inflation and changing statistics (work place safety, weather conditions, etc...) but "spikes" are the *last* thing that you should be seeing in your insurance bill.
That is not how health insurance works. Every year there is a spike in health insurance, especially since the affordable healthcare act came out. Mine jumped by 350%, then this year it jumped another 25%. I have had 0 medical expenses in the last year and probably under $1,000 in medical expenses in the last 25 years
That is also not how Home insurance works. My home insurance spikes up 25% every single year, supposedly because of tornadoes. So far, I have had $0 in home insurance claims over the last 25 y
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Every single insurance company does that. Try filing a legitimate home owners claim and watch your rate soar. When dealing with insurance companies pick the cheapest rate never file a claim unless it is major and pay all damages out of pocket. You will save money.
Health insurance, home owners, etc all do that. Car insurance tries but since it is a competitive market you can usually shop around. The rest aren't competitive though. Thus they can treat you like crap.
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If you designed that sort of building (and went through that cost), I'd imagine you could do something cool like flip the windows 180 degrees so someone inside could wash them.
Or you'd do just windows with no seam or edges for robots to miss.
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Or you'd do just windows with no seam or edges for robots to miss.
Making sure that you retain the glass, even in a seismic event (at least one insufficient to shatter it) is an important job. You can glue a window onto a car, but you don't want to glue it onto a skyscraper. It's pretty hard to do that job with frameless edges. However, you could solve that problem the same way they do in cars. Look at your windshield sometime, it's got a frame painted onto the glass. That covers up from the inside the ugly metal bits which are covered up by trim on the outside, as well as
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At the top of a taller building the winds are 30 to 50MPH stronger than at ground level. When you popped that window out of the frame the average office would explode in a fury of paperwork.
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Still not thinking big enough. Who needs windows? Giant LCD screens on the inside, tiny pinhole cameras on the outside FTW!
I know, it uses a lot of energy to power those screens, so it's not very environmentally friendly. But they could place big solar cells on the sides of the building to power them. Unfortunately, eventually those solar cells would get dirty and lose efficiency. In theory you could lower someone down on a scaffolding who could clean the solar cells when they got dirty, but as a practic
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For a human, using a sponge and squeegee combo is probably the most effective way to clean a window.
The high tech alternative to the sponge and squeegee isn't a robot, it's a chemical coating on the glass.
Titanium dioxide is a photocatalyst: it's a material that makes chemical reactions happen when the right kind of light shines on it. The right kind of light for titanium dioxide is ultraviolet (UV), the super-blue, high-energy part of sunlight that our eyes can't see, but that nevertheless can give us sunburn even on a cloudy day. When ultraviolet light hits the titanium dioxide coating of a self-cleaning window, electrons are generated. These turn water molecules from the air into hydroxyl radicals that make chemical oxidation and reduction reactions take place on the coating. In effect, the hydroxyl radicals attack organic (carbon-based) dirt and chop it up into smaller pieces that are much easier for rain to wash away. Since the reactions happen on the titanium coating, on the very surface of the glass, they attack the lowest layers of the dirt, loosening encrusted muck from the glass very effectively by chipping it away from the inside out (the opposite of normal window cleaning, where you effectively scrub the dirt from the outside in.)
Self-cleaning windows [explainthatstuff.com]
There are two problems:
Rain will probably not reach every corner of the window.
The literal curtain wall of the early box like glass towers has gone out of fashion.
The coating can add maybe 20% to the cost of a window.
The Twin Towers had 43,600 windows --- 600,000 square feet of glass. 'Mind you, the architect of the WTC was notoriously afraid of heights and windows were kept a
Of course you can have self cleaning windows! (Score:2)
Using simple magnets the windows could self clean in the same way someone can clean the inside of a fishtank
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Having several fishtanks myself. I can attest to the fact that those magnet cleaners suck.
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I wonder if you could reasonably make one that had a rotating element, or was one. I'm thinking either a rotating drum on the inside with magnets in and brushes on which is attracted to your outside device which is the same, but the drum has rubber on it instead of brushes — or a motorized jobber on the outside, with a part which rotates around an axis perpendicular to the glass.
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Both sides of the glass need to be cleaned at some point. Why not brushes on both sides?
Because cleaning accessible glass is a job easily done with typical glass-cleaning methods which don't involve fiddling with magnetic pucks. You can get it done with soap, water, and an ordinary squeegee/sponge combo.
There is a window roomba already, it leaves streaks.
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When I had a salt water tank, I found these magnets to be awesome. The only real issue was that you had to have one for each pane. It would be kind of clever if they made one magnet slightly larger than the other so you could get the inside one to scrub slightly behind the outside trim piece.
If you're clever you can get it to hop from pane to pane. I Could do it ever time. It works for very basic cleaning. But algae will definitely build up despite it and you have to go in with a real scrubber.
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That seems like a problem easily solved with a tether.
Cleaning surfaces between floors may be an issue.
Roomba for skyscrapers (Score:2)
I'm going to say there will be a window roomba for skyscrapers within a decade. It's too lucrative a market not to pursue.
The improvement in suction cups have been here for a while. Short of some innovative cleaning system that require little/no water, resupply and dirt offloading can be handled by some ancillary robot that runs back and forth to some main hub.
All that will really be needed is some safety system to keep it falling from pedestrians. If it's a cable, then the ancilliary robot might be done
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And, they need the humans for more than just washing the windows.
From TFS:
So, your Skyscraper Edition Roomba still doesn't cover all the needs of buildings like this, and you'll still need to be able to get people there for other tasks. Someone still needs to be able to physically get there anyway.
Me, no way I'd do th
So slashdot is (Score:2)
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If /. taught me anything this week, we need to figure out a way to 3D print Misogynistic Robotic Overlords that run on Linux.
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Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those!
Wait, is that too old?
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Question (Score:2)
Question:
Why are we not designing these buildings with the "robots" built-in?
Surely it can't be that hard to include "self-cleaning window system" in the multi-million dollar installation costs?
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Shocked... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Why is it that all the high mortality rate jobs have such shitty wages?
Because it's a crime to be broke.
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I asked for a citation of how being broke was supposedly illegal, not about being a vagrant.
For what it's worth, you can be broke without being a vagrant anyways, and of course, being broke is not strictly required to be a vagrant either.
Vagrancy laws are only applicable to being broke if you consider vagrancy the only possible outcome of being broke. While that may statistically be the most likely outcome, it is far from the only one. A destitute person may have a friend who is letting them stay at
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I'm shocked that those window cleaners make "up to $26.89" WTF seriously? They just bragged like that was a good number for that sort of work....?
That is $27/hr + benefits.
The median household income in the US is $52,000, something the geek tends to forget.
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Why is it that all the high mortality rate jobs have such shitty wages?
Because they are all done by men, whose lives are not valued by our society.
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Re:Shocked... (Score:4, Insightful)
You think $26.89/hr is a low wage? Wow. That's $53780/yr! A huge amount of money. And people wonder why international outsourcing and illegal immigrants are a problem. The North American standard of living is unsustainable, pure and simple. All these rich folks have no idea that the majority of the population works for far less. Housing alone costs about 80% of earnings for most people. Ain't capitalism grand?
In the cities where they are needed, that's not a whole lot of money. I bet those guys live in hovels or commute from waaaayyy outside the cities the work in.
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The skill isn't in the cleaning, it's in the rigging. They give the job to what would otherwise be janitors, and that's where safety suffers. I've seen these cleaning rigs up close and they are always in rough condition. The ropes are frayed like crazy, when in any other rigging industry they wouldn't allow that kind of wear. Then there's the cables and I'll bet they're not much better but it's harder to tell. It sounds like competition in the window cleaning industry is so tense that they're cutting out sa
um no (Score:2)
Patrick McGeehan has apparently never seen a windshield wiper.
Apparently he's never heard of youtube either:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Seriously people, don't make declarative statements in your professional life without at least doing a google search first.
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, windshield wipes cannot and do not clean the entire window; you are silly
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, windshield wipes cannot and do not clean the entire window; you are silly
Two windshield wipers at opposing corners can cover a window. And if you designed the wipers cleverly, you might well get away with having one wiper ride a cam and hop over the frame to wipe two windows. Problem is, wipers don't wash anything, even if you spray water on the window. They just wipe it. But perhaps you could have a roller brush or sponge on one side which would be motorized and roll counter to the movement of the arm, and a squeegee on the other. It'd scrub across the window, then flip over at
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And how do you replace the wiper blades? Unclog the collection gutters? Stop the water systems from freezing? Fix it when it breaks?
Ideally, the units would swing into the spaces between the floors for maintenance. Having the water not freeze is a problem well-solved in automotive applications; I'd probably use off-the-shelf automotive component for much of such a system, at least in prototyping.
Lemme guess - you think your smarter than all the architects and engineers who have been dealing with this issue for over 100 years.
It's obvious that you think you're smarter than I am, but all you can do is piss, moan, and complain about how things are hard. Well, why not let some people with some ideas talk? You can go talk about how hard things are with all the other piss
Doesn’t have to be a true robot (Score:2)
Surely a remote control device of some sort should suffice, be smaller, faster and good enough if not perfect.
I’m amazed the windows aren't pre-designed for some kind of semi-automatic, rc-controled cleaning device.
There may then be some difficult areas that occasionally need a human crew on the outside, but if you could get this down to 5% or even 20% it would be a big safety win.
I imagine a range of remote units. Some very dumb and cleaning the bulk of the windows, then bigger more expensive units t
Umm, the original twin towers... (Score:3, Interesting)
The original twin towers DID use robotic window washers. They were built in 1971.
This problem has already been resolved, but they didn't design the new building in a way that robotic window washers could be implemented easily.
Oops.
As much as 16.89 $/hr ? (Score:2)
Any pay increase to these low end workers will almost immediately be spent creating economic activity in this country, boosting GD
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Plus benefits (Score:2)
I suspect they wash in pretty harsh weather. And as a union shop it likely means a certain number of paid days off, paid holidays, retirement, medical, training etc. It's true that they may only work 10 months of the year, but there may be "inside" work which needs to be done that can be accomplished during the coldest times (like the aforementioned ongoing safety training, maintenance and repair of gear, etc.), or they go get temp jobs doing inside work (or just take the winter off, like many teachers take
They said the same about LCDs (Score:2)
It wasn't that long ago that all LCDs were produced with a manual process of wiping and buffing the liquid crystal onto the glass substrate. No machine could be made to perform the task. This limited the size of panels that could be made and reduced yield with flaws from mistakes and contaminants. They finally automated the process to achieve the panels we have today. The same will be true of window washing robots.
Obviously the Union (Score:2)
is hampering the free market. Why, without the union and all that pesky classroom instruction and mentored apprenticing, I bet we could hire 100 window washers at $5 an hour! No need to worry about why robots can't do what my $5 South American Mexican can do. May the power of Axioms absolve you!
The Sears (non known as Willis) Tower (Score:2)
Another complexity with robotic window washers (Score:2)
Assume for a moment that robotic window washers could work:
Who will wash the washers?
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Assume for a moment that robotic window washers could work:
Who will wash the washers?
The Window Washer Washers.
Re:Why have we not solved this? (Score:4)
You're vastly underestimating the difficulties of material science.
"Why don't we just create a material that does the work itself" is the perfect idea of theorycrafting without any idea of what you're talking about.
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Fifty or more floors up the wind flying through would be enough to usurp anything in your office not nailed down.
You would have to design office spaces such that window washers would be able to get in and clean the windows which is tricky and messy especially given a lot of windows go to people who have offices with locked doors.
There's probably a ton of architectural issues involved
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You're vastly underestimating the difficulties of material science.
There are self-cleaning windows, based on coatings like titanium dioxide. But you need rain and sunlight to make this work --- and where the rain and sun can't reach you still need the window washer. You also need workers who can inspect, clean and repair the facade.
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Until you accidentally fall through.
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Windows that flip...
They'd probably crash. Although I suppose you could put some screens (preferably blue) to catch them.
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Works great on residences that are 20' high. Not so easy or useful on 1000' structures with 10' tall panes of glass and nearly constant 30-40 MPH winds.
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Yours wasn't funny, is all.
How about (Score:3)
Seems to me that if you design a skyscraper, you might incorporate windows that drop an interior safety barrier for weather isolation and personal safety, then flip over (all flipping action outside the building) so the inside is the outside, then retract the barrier. Once a week, say Saturday midnight, you flip 'em, and Sunday morning, the staff cleans the (now) inside surface. You get human cleaning flexibility (no dirt too tough) and absolute worker safety. Bonus: provides access for seal replacement, wi
Re: (Score:2)
The coatings on the glass are not symmetric. However I guess you could clean it and flip it back. Another problem is that people like to use the area near the windows of their office and put furniture there.