On her YouTube channel, Belinda Carr poses an interesting question: why did agriculture mechanize (ie: replace manual labor with machine labor), but not construction? Construction is often contrasted with factory-based production, but in many ways agriculture is a better comparison. Both construction and agriculture have traditionally been labor intensive activities. Both take place outdoors, exposed to the elements. And both require the work to be spread over a large, unstructured environment (unlike factory production, where the entire process can be tightly controlled).
I remember attending a talk by someone working in agTech on how the biggest misconception people entering the field have is that the challenge is in building the machine that allows for mechanization. Instead, almost all of the historical energy has gone into changing the environment to enable the machine to be built.
Different fruits & vegetables get mechanized by breeding a specific variant or planting the rows in a specific way that is friendlier to an automated process. Often, this comes at a compromise to flavor or texture (eg: fruits are bred to be hardier and picked more unripe off the tree so they survive sorting) which is why there's high end produce made the old way.
One problem with construction is that we're unwilling to approach the problem this way (probably mostly rightfully). We keep on trying to work on how can we use tools to build the houses were used to rather than what house compromises we're willing to make to crash the cost. The Soviet style building system did attempt to go the other way and, in retrospect, we've largely decided that the costs were probably not worth it.
I worked delivering building materials in the 50s as a truck driver's helper and observed small construction sites. Lumber and wall board was handled piece-by-piece. Now wall board is lifted in packets into 2nd and 3rd story windows by truck borne cranes bundled to fit the job specifications, and lumber is packaged in standard lengths and moved by fork-lift. Delivery requires only one person and a machine. Tools: battery operated, laser levels and measuring speed up work. Windows and doors come assembled in their frames. In the 50s, frame, casing, parting strips, sills, hardware came separately. Once the frame was installed, the window (glass installed) was cut and planed to fit tightly with weather stripping (also a separate item). And painted. Finally, it is a bit naive to describe a building site as "a large, unstructured environment." It's a bit harsh to say, but true: You have missed the progress in construction, but chosen basically non-comparable industries. Still fun and interesting.
In your masonry example ( "...masonry remains a completely manual task.") you are overlooking the large amount of mechanization of lifting. As recently as 1997 I noted in Turkey that brick and block was hand carried to a 2nd floor. The Lull dates to 1959; before that I do not know what was used but, especially on smaller jobs, say a 3-story brick apartment building, there was a lot more labor to get material up above the ground. One methodological problem in measuring productivity is that agricultural productivity is simpler to define; an acre of wheat is 1840 compares to an acre of wheat in 1940 or 2015, but are buildings the same? Is it reasonable to compare labor on a 1-story building vs. a 12-story one?
I live in a masonry-based European country, and I've seen a couple of those masonry inventions on a local engineering web site. When you see one, it becomes clear why masonry is still manual. I think you'd need a well-tuned robot and a really big wall for the setup and monitoring of the robot to be worthwhile. Trained masons are actually pretty fast.
Maybe the robot would have an advantage in not needing time-consuming scaffolding. But then it would have to do the job perfectly.
For smaller jobs, they'd have to really nail the setup. Something like driving the robot out, using some kind of laser system or similar to program in the wall, and then it starts all by itself.
But is there even enough business to be able to do this? Could you ever hope to recover the cost of making such a robot? Perhaps robot-making needs to be simpler first.
There's also how long things last. A piece of fruit lasts maybe a few years. An automobile lasts maybe twenty. A building can last for more than a century. Divide the creation cost by the lifetime and the creation cost becomes less pressing.
I remember attending a talk by someone working in agTech on how the biggest misconception people entering the field have is that the challenge is in building the machine that allows for mechanization. Instead, almost all of the historical energy has gone into changing the environment to enable the machine to be built.
Different fruits & vegetables get mechanized by breeding a specific variant or planting the rows in a specific way that is friendlier to an automated process. Often, this comes at a compromise to flavor or texture (eg: fruits are bred to be hardier and picked more unripe off the tree so they survive sorting) which is why there's high end produce made the old way.
One problem with construction is that we're unwilling to approach the problem this way (probably mostly rightfully). We keep on trying to work on how can we use tools to build the houses were used to rather than what house compromises we're willing to make to crash the cost. The Soviet style building system did attempt to go the other way and, in retrospect, we've largely decided that the costs were probably not worth it.
I worked delivering building materials in the 50s as a truck driver's helper and observed small construction sites. Lumber and wall board was handled piece-by-piece. Now wall board is lifted in packets into 2nd and 3rd story windows by truck borne cranes bundled to fit the job specifications, and lumber is packaged in standard lengths and moved by fork-lift. Delivery requires only one person and a machine. Tools: battery operated, laser levels and measuring speed up work. Windows and doors come assembled in their frames. In the 50s, frame, casing, parting strips, sills, hardware came separately. Once the frame was installed, the window (glass installed) was cut and planed to fit tightly with weather stripping (also a separate item). And painted. Finally, it is a bit naive to describe a building site as "a large, unstructured environment." It's a bit harsh to say, but true: You have missed the progress in construction, but chosen basically non-comparable industries. Still fun and interesting.
In your masonry example ( "...masonry remains a completely manual task.") you are overlooking the large amount of mechanization of lifting. As recently as 1997 I noted in Turkey that brick and block was hand carried to a 2nd floor. The Lull dates to 1959; before that I do not know what was used but, especially on smaller jobs, say a 3-story brick apartment building, there was a lot more labor to get material up above the ground. One methodological problem in measuring productivity is that agricultural productivity is simpler to define; an acre of wheat is 1840 compares to an acre of wheat in 1940 or 2015, but are buildings the same? Is it reasonable to compare labor on a 1-story building vs. a 12-story one?
I live in a masonry-based European country, and I've seen a couple of those masonry inventions on a local engineering web site. When you see one, it becomes clear why masonry is still manual. I think you'd need a well-tuned robot and a really big wall for the setup and monitoring of the robot to be worthwhile. Trained masons are actually pretty fast.
Maybe the robot would have an advantage in not needing time-consuming scaffolding. But then it would have to do the job perfectly.
For smaller jobs, they'd have to really nail the setup. Something like driving the robot out, using some kind of laser system or similar to program in the wall, and then it starts all by itself.
But is there even enough business to be able to do this? Could you ever hope to recover the cost of making such a robot? Perhaps robot-making needs to be simpler first.
There's also how long things last. A piece of fruit lasts maybe a few years. An automobile lasts maybe twenty. A building can last for more than a century. Divide the creation cost by the lifetime and the creation cost becomes less pressing.
Here is a newer article on robotic screw fastening: https://www.assemblymag.com/articles/94744-robotic-screwdriving-comes-of-age
I bet you'd like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/o0g2wi/this_is_how_brick_streets_are_laid_in_the/
Very interesting.