I 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.
CAT and others (hyundai, hitachi, john deere, kubota, komatsu, etc) are already exploring this sort of automation (and have been for at least a decade).
This isn't somehow a new industry because some Waymo engineers decided to make a company.
There have been a handful of residential venture backed bricklaying and extrusion concreting robotics startups that I am aware of but they've had trouble with outputs not meeting builsing standards, interupting other tradespeople workflows on construction sites, being difficult to adapt to new site conditions and ultimately a hard sell to customers - no one wants to be a guinea pig test site for what is likely the biggest purchase of their life.
I think it's similar to Tesla entering the automotive world. The existing automakers had some moats, but they also had a lot of legacy responsibilities and liabilities that Tesla did not have (existing warranties, lawsuits, recalls, parts stock, maintaining support for old vehicles in various internal software systems, updating software on old vehicles when age related problems arise, retiree pensions/healthcare, etc).
A newcomer in the heavy equipment space will have similar challenges and advantages. Funny enough, a lot of heavy equipment works very similar to cars with their CAN (and other) Buses for control and feedback.
I mean... Tesla still makes up a minority of vehicles out there. And without government investment, they almost certainly would not have made it to where they are, now?
Yes, Tesla was valued more for potential growth. But it was also the kind of potential growth that I'm not sure is viable outside of consumer spaces.
Are you serious? Building a good excavator is almost certainly more than just having the material. Similarly, knowing how to deal with the earth will have more than a few curves based on the composition.
It is not easy to find on demand trained operators that are willing to relocate in an instant to whatever forgotten by god construction site you set up for months.
I find this hard to believe, to be honest. The capital costs of the machinery is already such that paying a premium to relocate someone for the duration of the construction is almost certainly not the bottle neck for most construction jobs?
If you have numbers on this, I'm game to see them. Just because I find it hard to believe doesn't mean I think it is impossible.
This report isn't looking at open field construction, though? It literally highlights the most expensive cities to build in. I'm not surprised that it is expensive to keep skilled labor in places where they will be in very high demand.
There are companies (like Kiewit) that specifically hire and pay (a lot more) to incentivize their employees to travel. It's a really really hard job and many people burn out. The travel is brutal.
The worst is that it’s not even semi-permanent move. You go to the site, you work for some months then you need to move to the next. If by accident you have a family then guaranteed they cannot follow you and you will be seeing them only sporadically.
It is if you aren't adverse to training people and living with lower productivity for a few months as they learn. The biggest obstacle to becoming a heavy equipment operator is finding someone willing to put you in heavy equipment without already being an experienced heavy equipment operator. And the machines cost enough money that someone can't afford to just go buy their own excavator and practice, even really old used equipment that leaks fluids and can't run more than 20 minutes without overheating can cost 6 figures, especially if you also need a truck and large equipment trailer to move it. And even if someone likes the job and gets past those obstacles there are other restrictions, like drug usage, that keeps many people out of the business. You went home and smoked a joint last week but this week something broke or went wrong? Well you better hope they don't fear any liability because they will drug test you, fire you, and black list you to shed all liability.
What about caffeine? Tobacco? Refined sugars? Pain killers? Are you going to pay for people to do nothing for 6 months while they wait for an injury to heal and stop taking painkillers? Why are you not regularly drug tested for your job and fired and blackballed from the industry if it comes up positive?
It is completely idiotic to kick people out for smoking weed on their own time. And then you wonder why you have trouble filling these positions. People use drugs and have since before humans were human, get over it.
If you can automate efficiently enough, you can build far finer structures.
For example look at how detailed the structure and weld arrangement is for modern cars, vs. back when robots only just started to take care of the frame welding on the assembly line.
Or how optical HDMI cables are affordable because they use fully automated UV-cure-resin-glued fiber alignment straight from the cable end into the optoelectronic chips, without needing optical connectors or any other human-labor to get the light path connected up. That's how they manage to do it the conceptually easiest way: amplifier->laser->fiber->photodiode->amplifier, and repeat for the 4 high-speed pairs. Also handing the low speed communication channel separately with just normal wires as signal degradation isn't an issue for that.
Or for example 3d printer infill: that's something no one would do manually in such a way, but if it's just automated it's quite desirable/efficient.
App rental e-scooters: they rely on automation to organize even when parked "pretty much anywhere they're not gonna block traffic", and as such become relevant for even short trips.
If you have an unsupervised robot that lays bricks for you to build up a house, you can get away with smaller bricks (and thus a lighter/cheaper machine needing a smaller crane to lift up/out of higher floors), than if you need a human to supervise it.
Smaller machine if slower means more machines, meaning cheaper production of the machines due to scale.
Auto-feeders for nail guns in construction means more smaller nails as placing 3 in a row takes barely longer than just 2.
Especially if the nail gun could, say, run like an optical mouse and automatically trigger at a configured spacing while dragged along a surface with the trigger held down.
Do 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.
It 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.
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.