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from the building-a-more-robotic-tomorrow dept.
Hadrian is not the first large-scale industrial robot that can complete a whole build from start to finish. It's not even the first outdoor construction robot.
What's remarkable is it's both. As Mike told me, "Anything you can build inside a factory ... we're getting really, really good at. Trouble is, nothing's happening outdoors."
That's because environmental factors like wind and temperature variations can make life difficult for robots outdoors.
Most robots can't adjust to small, quick changes in wind or temperature fast enough to keep up.
That's fine if little wobbles won't make a big difference. But when you're working on something as large-scale as building a house and a light breeze could lead to bricks being laid way out of position, it can get very dangerous.
So up till now, any robot building on such large scales had to be indoors in minutely controlled environments.
Hadrian has overcome this problem using the precision technology Dynamic Stabilisation Technology (DST). DST was developed in Perth by Mike's cousin, Mark Pivac, back in the early 2000s. The computer program measures environmental factors an astounding 2000 times per second, then accounts for them in real time.
If robots replace the construction workers, who then will wolf whistle?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 24 2018, @03:43PM (11 children)
Foxconn is employing something like a million people, most of whom make iPhones. I don't buy that argument.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday January 24 2018, @04:11PM (10 children)
The market is more diverse and larger, if you're counting factory workers too, let's just start tallying up the industry: 88,000 employees here: http://investors.lb.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=94854&p=irol-irHome [lb.com]
886 separate manufacturers there: http://www.globalsources.com/manufacturers/Lingerie.html [globalsources.com]
Walk into a retail store like Target - there's good square footage devoted to cell-phones, but more to underwear.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 25 2018, @01:21AM (9 children)
Walk into a hardware store like Home Depot. There's good square footage devoted to rechargeable tools, but not underwear.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 25 2018, @01:30AM (8 children)
Nor cell phones.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 25 2018, @03:18AM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 25 2018, @03:47AM (6 children)
I don't think this started as a discussion of importance, but rather of how many creative, inventive people are employed by the respective industries.
Something along the lines of: employment is not a maximization of individuals' potential to help the world.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday January 25 2018, @05:38AM (5 children)
Umm, you were claiming something much worse than employment being slightly imperfect. That somehow engineers were being diverted from space development projects to work on fake nipples for women's underwear. The skill sets don't overlap much so, sorry, I'm just not buying it.
Even worse you claimed it was a bad thing. But I can't help but note, for example, that fake nipples need more attention than NASA's Space Launch System does, the latter being a hindrance than progress on space development. Of course, the SLS happens to be politically driven rather than market-driven. But who knew that greed and self-interest didn't go away just because the market wasn't involved?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday January 25 2018, @01:05PM (4 children)
The political system is large enough to be considered a market in and of itself - one with different drivers, but still executed by humans, so greed and self-interest are still factors - even if they aren't the explicit aim.
Two ends of a spectrum - market driven employment is like a pool, deep where the profits are, pour in your talented people and they will swim toward their areas of interest/expertise, but only so many fit in the "noble" (a.k.a. shallow) end of the pool, the rest end up where the profits are.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 26 2018, @03:52PM (3 children)
Ok, fine. Political systems do have market aspects. But these problems don't come from the market aspects. Greed and self-interest would exist anyway because society and the government consist of distinct sentient entities. And in the absence of a well-functioning market to divert those interests into productive directions, they tend to manifest in uglier ways (for example, bloody coups and power struggles).
And it would be even better if less people fit in the "negative RoI" end of the pool. Fake nipples may be low value, but they're cheap to research and don't require that we take public funding in order to succeed. Meanwhile something like the SLS actually harms the interests it's supposed to help. I don't think we need to pay our best and brightest to make our society worse.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 26 2018, @04:43PM (2 children)
I think this is missing the point: the market is devouring resources (especially human capital) based on ROI. So many intelligent, talented engineering graduates who have aptitude and desire to work in design, development, making better things to make a better world, end up washed into the sales and support end of the pool, because that's what it takes to make a company successful in the competitive marketplace.
I've worked for a number of commercial failures, and a few commercial successes. They all had similar engineering staff to product being developed ratios: it really does take about the same number of engineers to screw in a lightbulb wherever you go. The difference in success is strongly correlated to investment in sales, marketing, people attempting to influence other people to buy a product, whether in preference to a competitor's similar product, or to buy a unique, innovative product as opposed to basically doing nothing. The ratios are dumbfounding: implantable medical device, cost to design, manufacture and support all the regulatory BS overhead: $600 per copy, cost to market the device, get it sold: >$14,000 per copy. (additional cost to the patient to have the hospital implant it: ~$15K, net cost to the patient's insurance provider: ~$30K, profit to the company ~$400 per device - typically absorbed in general overhead.) Over 2/3 of the $600 manufacturing cost is people's salaries and benefits, but 100% of the sales cost is salary, commission, benefits. The companies I worked for that "built the better mousetrap" "best in world performance and efficiency" for a given problem, without a huge - much larger than the investment in actually making the widget - investment in sales and marketing, they fizzled. When you've got that better mousetrap, the first order of business is to sell investors on the idea that people will buy it if you push them hard enough, so the investors open their wallets, give you a pile of cash, and see if you really can sell the widget - if you can sell them efficiently enough to make a profit that the investors find appealing, then they open their wallets wider and you ramp up production and sales. Personally, I find the ratios appalling, it feels like >80% of the effort involved in doing anything for anyone in the world is just make-work.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 26 2018, @04:48PM (1 child)
So many intelligent, talented engineering graduates yadda yadda end up doing useful stuff. That's terrible!
"Feels like" != "is". They wouldn't be paying you, if it were genuine make-work.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 26 2018, @09:01PM
I find that jobs are offered and retained as much on ability of the employer to pay as they are on employee merit. If the employer isn't able to pay, BOOM! you're out of work. When they are able to pay, there's a lot of deadwood that seems to float merrily along with the productive workforce.
It's not useful, it's competitive. If the world could occasionally make up it's mind instead of being open to influence: Coke vs. Pepsi for example, billions of dollars in competitive advertising and marketing could be used for something else.
🌻🌻 [google.com]