The House Building Machine 357
thelastguardian writes "With 400,000 American construction workers injured each year, and a typical American house takeing at least six months to complete, house building had been the same tiring gritty job for 20,000 years. For this problem, Behrokh Khoshnevis has a solution: A Robotic House Builder. An eight feet tall and six feet wide phototype house building machine, with ceramic mixing ability/computer control back-end, is currently building solid walls inside University of Southern California. To add to the excitement, even NASA is evaluating the machine as a builder on Moon using moondust- Who said moondust is useless?"
A neight feet tall and six feet wide phototype... (Score:5, Funny)
USC (Score:2, Funny)
USC is in a poor part of town. I imagine in time they'll want to use these robots to fortify the walls of the campus to keep everyone else out...
Too funny.
Re:USC (Score:2, Interesting)
It'd be cooler if they'd find some people in that part of town who could beta-test the whole process, and live in a few of these houses. Like an automated Habitat for Humanity or something.
Re:USC (Score:3, Interesting)
Haha! I'm laughing at the fact that people would think that way at all and live in gated communities period.
Having attended SC, it's a little surreal, and a little too elitist for my taste.
Nice misinterpretation though.
Re:USC (Score:2)
I'm an elitist asshole. Thank you for pointing that out to me. I have sinned!
Forgive me slashdot! What penance must I perform? Read 1000 Jon Katz articles? Browse at -1? Take naked pictures of Cowboyneal?
I am in your hands!
Re:USC (Score:5, Insightful)
Your heart may be in the right place but like many ideas inspired by emotion it's not a good one. Keep the robots building walls on campus that are not used for anything, that can fail without endangering anyone. Don't beta test the robots building load bearing walls that may collapse on a family in the middle of the night.
First steps to a Von Neumann Engine (Score:5, Interesting)
Heh, made me think... (Score:2)
One could imagine sending these things out to distant worlds far in advance of our arrival.
When we arrive to our new utopia, we can just add a reactor or two, turn the lights on and move in, en mass.
Re:First steps to a Von Neumann Engine (Score:2)
We will certainly use Von Neumann probes, but not to create millions of new Earth, ready to be populated with trillions of human colonists. That would be just pointless.
Re:First steps to a Von Neumann Engine (Score:3, Funny)
Thomas-
Neight feet tall! (Score:4, Funny)
one-piece houses (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:one-piece houses (Score:2, Interesting)
What? Rust?
Who are you to subvert the laws of physics (and chemistry)?
CSR 10 Chapter 3 section 4 states in part "The entropy of the Universe will always increase unless time is reversed. Unauthorized time reversal is a class B felony. Failure to allow entropy to increase in a home/residence is a class C felony."
Re:one-piece houses (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem with "factory built" homes, at least old-style, is that they were all the same model, and tended to be a bit... antiseptic. I like the methods I read about for using the methods used in shipbuilding - automatic fabrication of custom components by machines - to build custom houses out of conventional materials (or metal frame with conventional exteriors) as components that can simply be hooked together on-site.
Pre-fab is more likely to work (Score:3, Informative)
As for walls, he's more impre
Re:one-piece houses (Score:2)
I've seen stories on these steel houses but can't find out where they were!
Ok, I got it (Score:2)
Aren't one of these houses protected? And didn't F.L.Wright design one of these homes?
I swear I saw this whole thing on tv before.
Re:one-piece houses (Score:4, Funny)
Excellent! Now I don't have to worry about the security configuration of my wireless gear!
yawn (Score:3, Funny)
In Japan... (Score:2, Funny)
dust (Score:2)
I don't know about useless, but these crazy people [slashdot.org] seem to think lunar dust is a dangerous, pressing concern!
This is new? (Score:2, Flamebait)
If you want a bare concrete wall 'house', fine. What about elec, water, sewage, cable lines? Fixtures? Foundation? There is much more to a house than 4 bare concrete walls.
Re:This is new? (Score:2, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Concrete - back to the past?? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Concrete - back to the past?? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Concrete - back to the past?? (Score:2)
Someone who can't afford a house?
Thomas Edison's Concrete Homes (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This is new? (Score:2, Informative)
No, you didn't RTFA...
A wall alone does not make a house. A contour crafter would also need to insert plumbing pipes, electrical wiring, and ventilation ducts in walls as it builds them. The prototype can't do that, but Khoshnevis sees that as a trivial problem: "The second hand on your watch was placed robotically on a tiny shaft. Modern robotics can achieve tight tolerances and very high speeds. So having segments of tubing robotically inserted, put atop one another, and welded together as the wall goe
Re:This is new? (Score:3, Insightful)
I dunno, I'd suspect the walls are the hard part. I think of it like this: if you're building, say, a moon base, you send up a robot to build the raw structure and seal it all in. Then your astronauts can go up there and find a pre-built habitat waiting for them. All they need to do is add a little bit of wiring and plumbing and artificial atmosphere, but that'll be easy since they're already protected from the lack of atmosphere and whatnot. Or something like that.
Re:This is new?-This Old House. (Score:2)
You'd have to be VERY creative not to make there very ugly.
Re:This is new?-This Old House. (Score:2)
Re:This is new?-This Old House. (Score:2)
Here ya go...here's your concrete bunker.
Re:This is new?-This Old House. (Score:2)
Countour Crafting ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Quote:
Contour Crafting is a fabrication process by which large-scale parts can be fabricated quickly in a layer-by-layer fashion. The chief advantages of the Contour Crafting process over existing technologies are the superior surface finish that is realized and the greatly enhanced speed of fabrication. The success of the technology stems from the automated use of age-old tools normally wielded by hand, combined with conventional robotics and an innovative approach to building three-dimensional objects that allows rapid fabrication times. Actual scale civil structures such as houses may be built by CC. Contour Crafting has been under development under support from National Science Foundation and Office of Naval Research.
CC.
Re: (Score:2)
Not to be pedantic... (Score:5, Funny)
A neight feet tall and six feet wide phototype house building machine...
That's some amazing editing!
A robotic editor... (Score:2)
But imagine if it did... Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these--no word need ever be misspelled again!
But seriously, folks. Plastic.com has a built-in spell-checker. Why doesn't Slashdot, at least for the editors? Or, better yet, why don't we have literate editors?
In Soviet Russia, Robots Spell Check You! (Score:2)
A search for eight (or is it a new 8/9 number) prototype will not find this article.
Add an Edit: tag to say spelling fixed.
Re:Not to be pedantic... (Score:2)
Re:Not to be pedantic... (Score:2)
Re:Not to be pedantic... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. This is an improvement from the 4 yr olds we had last year.
Re:Not to be pedantic... (Score:5, Funny)
They probably are last year's 4 yr olds.
I don't like the sound of this (Score:2, Interesting)
Still, with the help of a few gold blocks those unemployeed builders could have a great career as Lode Runners, destroying all the bad walls for us.
won't you please think of the workers... (Score:2)
Typical Scientist (Score:4, Insightful)
From TFA: A wall alone does not make a house. A contour crafter would also need to insert plumbing pipes, electrical wiring, and ventilation ducts in walls as it builds them. The prototype can't do that, but Khoshnevis sees that as a trivial problem
Yeah, it'll be trivial to take an 8' tall by 6' wide robot that lays concrete, and fix it up to dig and lay a foundation, run cable, wire, dry-wall, plaster, hang windows & doors, install carpet, install cabinets, etc. etc. A robotic housebuilder would essentially require a superstructure encompassing the house. The self-building cranes they use for high-rises are just for the I-beams - everything else is done by hand, and the frame for a house is the easy part - it goes up in a day or two for even the largest houses.
What about the small stuff? How is the robot going to keep the first wall plum while it starts on the second?
I think Dr. Khoshnevis needs to watch a few episodes of This Old House before calling anything trivial.
Re:Typical Scientist (Score:2, Informative)
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~khoshnev/RP/CC/Utilities.
Re:Typical Scientist (Score:2)
Concrete/brick walls, or wooden? I can imagine concrete or brick taking a lot longer than wooden walls.
Re:Typical Scientist (Score:4, Informative)
Brick walls?? A brick house these days is just brick siding covering up the stick frame. Theres actually an airgap in between the bricks and framing, the bricks don't even help in the support of the house, and the house doesn't help in the support of the bricks. Brick siding can take up to a week to complete and is usually close to one of the last things done on a home during the finish phase. BTW in hurricane areas, there are usually reinforcing straps worked into the brick walls for obivious reasons.
A stick frame house, or wooden as you call it, can go from a slab/already set basement to finish rough in about a week or less. The point the grandparent poster was trying to make, and that you missed, is that "the roughing in period" when the frame of a structure goes up is usually the quickest part of the build. The final phase of the building or finishing out part is the MOST time consuming part of the build, period.
Construction cost is not in the walls (Score:2)
I'm currently nine months through an 11 month project to build a house and frankly the time spent raising walls and laying pipes has been small in comparison to the laying of the foundations and the huge number of "finishing" jobs. Without these the output of these robots may be functional but is doomed to look rather i
Re:Typical Scientist (Score:2)
Oh no!!! (Score:2)
I can say this becuase I used to be one.
This solution will not be feasible... (Score:4, Informative)
So while construction conglomerates have a ready supply of migrant workers, there's little incentive to invest in robots to replace them. (Unless you're talking about making manufactured homes or something like that, then robots may make more sense).
There are other versions of this invention around (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.abc.net.au/newinventors/txt/s1300261
Zonked? (Score:4, Funny)
Lame Point in Article (Score:2)
I built a cedar shed in my backyard today. I could have purchased a pre-made one for the same price, but I had a great tim
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lame Point in Article (Score:3, Insightful)
If they are able to retrain and find work in a skilled field that pays as well as their prior position did then, yes, there is a gain.
Re:Lame Point in Article (Score:3, Insightful)
"Yeah, we should really ban tractors because they put all those farmers out of work! Now the farmers will have to try and find a job at Walmart or McDonalds!"
"Yeah, we should ban nail guns because they put all the hand nailing carpenters out of work!"
Repeat ad infinitum
You don't see how this is a net gain? See, new wealth is created by more efficient use of resources and labor, which leads to the overall standard of living increasing.
Improvements that put people out of work and force t
Developing countries? (Score:2)
"A billion people today do not have adequate shelter," he says. Using soil dug from the building site and stabilized with cement, the contour crafter could erect inexpensive dwellings customized to a family's needs.
Oh yeah, it's obvious that a robotic house builder is the only solution for all those poor people living in tents. Can it make coffee from cow dung?
In other news (Score:2)
What about the finishing? (Score:3, Insightful)
I just moved into a new block of houses (renting) a couple of months ago. 6 months sounds like a *very* long time - I've been here about 7 weeks and the brick homes that were just being started when I moved in are "almost" finished.
It would seem that the finishing is what takes the longest, though... fittings, wiring, plumbing, windows, tiles, carpeting, cabinets, kitchen, etc.
IIRC the frames went up in just days, roof/walls in a few weeks. A big new house was built next to my parents place; being a "kit home" it looked like a mostly finished house on the outside in less than a month...
Re:What about the finishing? (Score:3, Insightful)
So, yeah 6mo is
Re:What about the finishing? (Score:2)
400 000 injured is an emotive argument and something that should lead to prosecutions of companies for neglecting safety regulations (assuming those regulations exist) but throwing millions out of work is not the answer.
Better health and safety regulations? (Score:2)
Secondly you are never going to eliminate injuries completely. Even in an office environment you get injuries; paper can cut quite badly. Therefore the figure of 400,000 injured workers is meaningless, as there is no indication of the seriousness of the injuries, and neither is there any indication of the number of people working in the industry.
Soon, houses that will be robots! (Score:3, Funny)
Then Professor Frink's plan will be a reality:
Professor Frink: Well, as you can see, when the burglar trips the alarm, the house raises from it's foundations and runs down the street, round the corner to safety... *house burns*
ADAA (Score:2)
Seriously though, the reason its so important for us to sort out this whole filesharing mess now is not because of music or movies, but because the day when 3d fabricators because cheap enough to be the 2nd home printer is fast approaching. When you can fabricate anything, and all you need is a file from a filesharing network, what will happen to the economy?
Neight feet tall. (Score:2)
This thing is a whole NEIGHT feet tall?!?!! Damn, I didn't even know there was such a big number. Well heck, I often can't remember what comes after three in countin'. But neight feet tall... That must be pretty big!
Quick patent around it (Score:2)
Better still, wait a couple of years, patent making houses with a concrete extruder, attach it to your abandoned (really failed) earlier patent applications, wait ten years till nobo
Moondust (Score:2)
Next, it has oxygen that can be liberated. Also, it's very rich in minerals. There are plans that have been worked up for years that take regolith and energy (from solar arrays or nuclear) and put high-grade iron, nickel and other elements out the other side, using some chemicals that are recovered
Re:Moondust (Score:2)
One possible reason is the vast amounts of He (3), a rare isotope of Helium that is produced by the sun and collects on the moon in the regolith. He (3) is potentially a huge source of fusion energy, far safer, cheaper or easier than Deuterium or Tritium.
Until we work out how to do it though, I'm putting my money on solar power
House printer (Score:2)
So, we need: (Score:2)
A robot to grade the site - level the dirt off.
A robot to dig the foundation.
A robot to do the walls (in progress).
A robot to do the interior finish work.
A robot to do the exterior finish work.
And a really ANNOYING robot to run around with a megaphone yelling at all the other robots "Four Hours! We only have FOUR HOURS until the family gets back!" and "Mr. Robotic Bus Driver - MOVE THAT BUS!"
--
Seriously, give the amount of pre-fabrication that can be done on a conventional house now (wall se
house "kit" via US mail (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I wonder how long... (Score:2)
Benefits aren't all that great, but at least there's no hard manual labor.
Re:I wonder how long... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I wonder how long... (Score:5, Funny)
And that's where you are wrong, you see, I am currently developing a means to utilize the unused processing cycles of the human brain (and for the average slashdotter like yourself, that's quite a few) to allow for unimaginably parralel computing power. This massively distributed neural computing network will in turn assist in the development of a new form of energy procurement which will allow for a cheap and infinitely renewable energy supply allowing the exponential expansion of our robot workforce and robot armies.
This will culminate in a new society where the average citizen will no longer physically work, but instead recieve e-credits for computing cycles performed in the comfort of our many power-station multiplex theatres.
Re:I wonder how long... (Score:2, Interesting)
According to your plan, the more brain cycles you provide the richer you get... Unfortunately, it will be the stupid people getting richer, the unimaginative dull minded people... and since money gets you power, it will be these people in power... controlling the robot armies. As we all know, stupid people leading large armies is not a good thing.
Re:I wonder how long... (Score:2)
And as for the employees becoming wealthy... I can assure you that they would get little more than they wouuld have for an equal amount of hours working at Walmart. And besides... when the quality of life as a host in our system will be more enriching than anything they could aspire to out here,
Re:I wonder how long... (Score:2)
Re:I wonder how long... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I wonder how long... (Score:2, Interesting)
Comfortable squalor may well beat being on call all the time and always striving for cheaper & faster...
Re:I wonder how long... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:what about windows (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sounds like an interesting idea, BUT (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sounds like an interesting idea, BUT (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not really trying to argue this way is right or that way is wrong but just point out how complex this situation is. On top of all of that is the fear mongering about the "Al Queda" infiltrating their way into America through the Mexican/U.S. border..
We enjoying a great housing market because of cheap migrant labour, should we not take advantage of it while it's there ?
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:More identical boxes (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:More identical boxes (Score:2, Insightful)
Because the moderators don't RTFA.
Affordable custom housing! (Score:2)
Yeah! Now I can... now I can... oh wait, the bank/lender still won't give me a loan because this doesn't change my age (22), and they don't think I can make a house payment when I've never had a problem paying a rent payment on my apt for nearly 2 freakin' years.
Re:More identical boxes (Score:2)
Hell, I don't want to live in some "house" extruded from solid block of concrete. Get in there if you like, just forget me. Good old european style brick houses, that's for me. Well, if I'd be in Florida I'd stick with wooden bungalows, that's more easy to rebuild year after year - ok, sorr
Re:More identical boxes (Score:2)
Re:More identical boxes (Score:2)
We are going to have to start living closer to where we work and shop.
Anyway building robots has been done, japan is already well ahead in this field.
This robot is quite useless, most of the work in building a home is the finshing work, roofing, wiring and
Re:400,000+ UNEMPLOYED construction workers the go (Score:2)
I think the effort needs to be put into safer construction tools. Nail guns, circular saws and table saws are all good places to keep improving. There's a guy trying to sell a design that stops a rotating blade in milliseconds but the table saw makers simply aren't interested, despite the current litigious environment and the fact that table saws are the #1 sou
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:400,000+ UNEMPLOYED construction workers the go (Score:2)
I'm not saying that's a bad thing, I'm not saying that's a good thing, I'm just saying that that's the way it is. Just look at the car industry for an example of people losing jobs to robots.
Re:400,000+ UNEMPLOYED construction workers the go (Score:2)
Of course. And you should also thank all those criminals for keeping police officers, lawyers, judges, and jailors in job. Not to speak of the indirect jobs which come from building jails, court buildings and police stations, producing police cars and prisoner transport cars, making police uniforms and handcuffs, ... Ah, I forgot, since the
Re:do our bidding (Score:2)
Re:Perhaps not useless, but.... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yeah... (Score:2)