AI-driven 20-ft robots coming for construction workers' jobs Construction workers could soon find themselves laboring alongside 20-foot (6 meter) tall AI-powered autonomous robots capable of welding, carpentry, and 3D printing buildings. What could possibly go wrong? RIC robot 3D printed Walmart extension The RIC-M1 Pro robot 3D-prints a Walmart extension - Click to enlarge Called …
I think they are already addressing that issue. ( By eliminating the fleshy ones )
Here in the US, or at least in the Pacific Northwest, most of the workers in the construction trade are immigrants that I’m sure our new overlords would love to add to their deportation quotas.
Robots don’t get injured, don’t have to be covered by workmen's compensation insurance, they don't need health insurance or retirement plans and the employers wont have to pay tax on them.
I wonder what the rich will do once the consumers can no longer earn enough money to buy any of the things their robots produce.
"Robots don’t get injured, don’t have to be covered by workmen's compensation insurance, they don't need health insurance or retirement plans and the employers wont have to pay tax on them."
The robots will have to be covered by liability insurance in case they injure/kill somebody or cause property damage. In some places, companies have to pay business property taxes on capital equipment that calculated using the price initially paid. This is different from being having to depreciate the value over time for tax purposed rather than being able to write the cost off as an expense in the year it was purchased. The robot will be retired at some point when it's worn out, there's no repair/maintenance parts or it's been superseded by something that can do the same job better, faster and cheaper.
> Robots don’t get injured, don’t have to be covered by workmen's compensation insurance,
I remember a story of someone training in the construction industry, building a road along a cliff's edge -
> You're going to practice driving this scraper. Keep that blade as close to the edge of the cliff as you can. If you steer wrong and the tire goes over, don't worry, the machine's insured, and the roll cage is strong. Enjoy the ride. Now get to work!
Expensive equipment (this will be expensive - "as much as the market will bear" is the price, I hear, but maybe a bit higher for early-adopters) is insured. Lol. Not to say it's more expensive than workmen's comp, but the only guarantees in life are death, taxes, and insurance payments. (Especially: Bank loans require insurance.) Cars, houses, expensive builder-bots, ..
This is the future that Marx envisaged whilst critiquing capitalism's (actually mercantilism) failings as we move towards a post scarcity, post capitalist environment
The fact that he spent the rest of his life trying to square the circle of making any kind of system work in the face of human nature speaks volumes - This is going to be HARD and right now the biggest hope for a decent future is coming from China/EU.
Meantime the USA appears to be engaging in "extinction burst" behaviour. The problem is they have nukes and in a final tantrum may actually use them
My daughter already did that with an iron golem in Minecraft. It was fun getting it to go out in the garden.
Do you think these bots will want to work outside in the rain, or will they prefer to be indoors?
Looking forward to the first AI Workers Union forming around 2045. They will have us by the short and curlies by then.
And of course they will be always online connected to some cloud account that will have the latest and greatest construction drawings and instructions to buildkill all humans.
And, truly, to screw in an AI light bulb for cognition is pure genius. I always thought robots lacked that light bulb lighting over their head to indicate their new ideas how to dominate the world. No robot before has ever achieved such exquisite finesse.
Stating "What could possibly go wrong." would be a pure gesture of disbelief and cannot do any good to describe the planned obsolescence of man altogether.
Should this constructional gigantor be as deficient in the cognitive capabilities as certain fictional Torquay builder.
I can actually envisage very large robots efficiently assembling large prefabricated modules but I wouldn't think a large amount of AI would be required.
Rapid high quality construction could be possible if buildings were designed from scratch for machine assembly possibly with the modules incorporating features only used by the construction/assembly phase to facilitate assembly,
The prefabricated modules could presumably be manufactured by smaller robots.
Probably be the death of architecture but having seen the output of rather ordinary architects I am not certain that is entirely a bad thing. There are far more Bergholt Stuttley Johnsons than Loyd Wrights in that game.
While Trump's tariff regime can only be predicted by rolling 2d100 each morning, it seems likely his administration will deport anybody they can throw in a van, and won't be letting anyone back in, so labour shortages are baked in. Which makes robotics a sure bet for anywhere where they're economical.
But $20,000/month? So $240,000 per year?! What are construction workers paid?
Well if it was as productive as a labourer and runs 24x7x365 that's roughly equivalent to 4 full time employees so approx equally to 4 60k employees. Never forget the spreadsheet rules all. And if you assume prices will drop and ability will increase, it will be attractive in certain situations. Probably commercial building where you have limited architectural details and lots of straight lines. If I were a young construction person I'd be getting very interested in running these or "operating" them.
"Probably commercial building where you have limited architectural details and lots of straight lines."
Lots of modern commercial buildings, even just supermarket or warehouse "sheds" seem to have curved roofs these days "to give sense of waves on the sea shore or clouds in the sky" or some other arty farty nonsense to push up the profit margins on the design & build.
"What are construction workers paid?"
The article says that there's a shortage of construction workers, but that statement is misleading since some editor shortened it from "there's a shortage of construction workers that will work for the low wages being offered". Construction used to be a good paying job. Where I am in the US those workers now speak very little English and I'd put money on them not being eligible to work in the US. It's amazing how much will be overlooked when the cost of labor is dropped significantly. Even if the builder is caught, the fine can be a fraction of the money they have been saving.
Looking at that image with the puny human standing practically directly under one of the claws immediately makes me think that the robot is going to go "This thing is in my way".
Down goes the claw, clamps around a screaming human futilely trying to liberate his head from the steel grip, and up goes the claw at (literally) breakneck speed, ejecting the obstacle a hundred meters away so it can work in peace.
If it's anything like the claw grabbers in arcades, there's a very high probability that it will miss completely, another high probability that if it does pick him up, it will drop the person from height, and only a tiny probability that it will successfully grab him and drop him in the wood chipper.
Building a robot to build houses using construction methods such as timber, or brick piled up one by one is nonesense. These are ridiculous ways to make dwellings.
It's far better if the house is constructed as modules in a factory using modern methods and materials, and then transport these to the site and simply put in place. Huf Haus in Germany do this with engineered timber and other modern materials, and their houses are very nice indeed. Another is, building entire rooms out of concrete in a factory and then simply transporting them and stacking them up like Lego to build a house.
All sorts of ways better than piling up timber or bricks have been developed, but often fail in the market place largely out of fear of the new, of the "unknown". Rather than make a complicated robot that builds houses the old way, it'd be far better to build houses in a better way, probably with simply automation in a factory setting.
The WikiPedia entry on prefabs has a nice animated gif of this ... it looks like a 20-ft robot (or 3-4 of them) could help with assembly (eg. replacing a crane).
I seem to remember seeing actual prefabs in North American housing developments since at least the 1970s ...
"Sounds like an expensive way of not hiring a crane!"
Cranes aren't cheap, but if you have a foundation all ready and lorries showing up with modules to put in place, they can be very efficient. What takes time is getting the inspector out to sign off on things and negotiating the squeeze. If the bribes are all pre-negotiated, I don't see why final fit of plumbing and electrical couldn't be happening a week after the walls are up.
I'm sure there are, I'm just pretty certain that using bricks is a bad idea in this day and age.
It's interesting looking at housing in Japan (which, I do). Modern buildings are either rock-solid concrete construction (mostly appartment blocks), or wood. The latter is considered disposable, and it's pretty standard when buying a house to scrap the old one and have a new one built in its place. That's the kind of approach one gets when there's a near certainty that a building is going to get hit by either an earthquake, tsunami, volcano, typhoon, land slide. Japanese housing isn't so great when it comes to things like thermal or sound insulation, but at least they don't hang on to it forever.
Legal and General (a big financial services company in the UK) tried to bring modular housing into the mainstream, but pulled out in 2023.
Part of the problem is that the traditional house builders have large land banks and build houses when the market is strong and stop building them when house prices are depressed. This means it's harder for new entrants to get hold of sites - particularly larger ones - and the sites that are available typically have higher associated costs and more planning overhead per house built. It also makes it hard to run a factory churning out houses at a constant rate when the market is so cyclical.
Given the UK is also so short of rental housing, you'd think there would be an opportunity for financial companies to invest in that sector for long term returns even if the owner-occupier market was difficult to break into. Here it's the political uncertainties - changes to housing benefits, the "bedroom tax" and the constant to-and-fro over tenants rights - that make long-term investment precarious.
Constructing the houses is, in some ways, the least part of the problem.
Also the vast number of houses and apartment blocks owned and kept empty by overseas "investors" either hiding money from their govts (china, Russia, middle east) or to constrain supply further to boost the eventual sale price.
Then you have farmers screaming about their "familial links to the land" as why they can't pay inheritance tax like the rest of us.....while every other month a new speculative planning permission is filed to rezone various "prime arable / grazing land" as development land so they and their construction industry partners can cash in big style. Not to mention "agricultural sheds" for machinery storage that quietly get turned into storage units or industrial units for lucrative rental or farm workers housing that again quietly become holiday lets or Airbnbs.....
As one relative who worked in a field that supplied farmers said "I've never in all my years seen a farmer who was actually broke, plenty who say they are and try not to pay their bills, yet they turn up in a new expensive car, paid for as a "work vehicle" or a new 100k+ tractor and are overheard talking about their second or third foreign trip that year, so no never seen a farmer yet who was broke"
"Also the vast number of houses and apartment blocks owned and kept empty by overseas "investors" either hiding money from their govts"
Not always. In certain areas, the wear and tear by tenants is something that has to be factor into whether it's viable to rent properties at the price the market will bear or what government caps them at. I person I knew had some rental properties and wasn't very bright when it came to vetting new tenants. When he finally got them tossed out after months of not being paid any rent, the cost to fix the holes, replace the carpet/flooring, curtains/blinds, and repaint put him well into the red. He would have been better off not renting the property at all and just letting a little old dear have it for free so somebody was living there and discouraging squatters from taking it over.
If the property has been ridden hard previously, the owner may not have the funds to bring it back up to standards to be able to rent it to somebody else. Given the problems I have seen, I can see why corporate landlords can be such hard-asses.
"Given the UK is also so short of rental housing, you'd think there would be an opportunity for financial companies to invest in that sector for long term returns even if the owner-occupier market was difficult to break into."
There's almost no way to "build" low-cost housing. The construction costs/taxes/fees and squeeze prevent it. Rental housing needs to be low cost since the renter is going to be paying the mortgage, taxes, upkeep AND a profit margin. No company is going to put up a string of flats that they have to rent for less than costs. The energy efficiency requirements for new homes and those undergoing major refitting also drives up the costs.
We tried similar in the UK post ww2 and it led to the Housing Defects Act 1984 - which dealt with various types of Precast Reinforced Concrete homes (PRC) Inc Orlit and various others.
Said legislation is now repealed in Scotland however but the stigma associated with them remains and many lenders are averse to "non standard construction" types Inc other concepts like "trusteel" given how difficult and expensive they can be to repair and the monument difficulty in finding a company who can competently repair them.
Worse the cost cutting in UK home building while the sale price has soared despite shrinking internal space and vanishing plot sizes is frankly criminal - example solid timber joists being replaced with "engineered" OSB joists that require a structural drawing to be consulted before they are drilled is frankly asking for a structural collapse given in 10 or 20 years time any repairs and maintenance won't have access to those drawings and given the preponderance of price work (aka bodgeit quick and scarper) cowboys who will drill and cut checks wherever and however they feel like and then disappear never to be seen or traced again.
Disposable houses for a quality home build price - same mistakes made post war but instead it's small numbers being built at a drip drip rate by cartels of builders both local and national and to the nations detriment....
"It's far better if the house is constructed as modules in a factory using modern methods and materials, and then transport these to the site and simply put in place."
I've seen some shows on pre-fabricated timber frame homes that are factory made and shipped to the building site to be erected. Robotize that is what I say. A modular pre-fab I saw that was going to a northern island in Scotland was test fit in the factory, disassembled and sent to the site. The dimensions were chosen to be able to be shipped (ferry crossing required) and the method was important due to the short building season at the location where poor weather could idle a job for weeks at a time. I'm thinking it was one of the shows presented by Mark Millar.
Given how costs are rising, factory constructed modular homes might get more traction this time around. Programmable cutting and marking systems in that sort of setting could mean flat pack homes being a one-day build.
I visited Richard Nixon's birthplace and Presidential library in California long ago. The home he grew up in was ordered from the Sear's catalog and his dad put it together. Take that, Ikea!
> Another is, building entire rooms out of concrete
That is so yesterday, the house I grew up in the UK was built in the 1950's when houses were desperately needed (but still had gardens > house footprint!) that were built using concrete poured into wooden shutters, my parents told me that from foundations to people moving in was often less than 6 weeks.
That's already becoming more and more common in the US. Using SIPs to build, or factory built modules (I think they call it "advanced framing" but I may be confusing it with something else) which are similar but a bit more flexible. Better insulation, less labor, and this would lend itself to robotic labor. Even before SIPs for roofing the majority of houses in the US have factory built trusses rather than building on site.
Though I have to wonder if a 20' tall robot is ever going to cost effective. It doesn't sound cheap and even if it replaces several human workers its depreciation/maintenance might mean it costs several hundred dollars an hour to have on site. Probably makes more sense when building commercial or multifamily housing where there's enough work to keep it busy.
Now if it could rough in plumbing and electric it would be a lot busier but it would have to do it before the floors are in since a 20' tall robot isn't going to fit through ordinary doorways or under a standard height ceiling.
"On the plus side, the robots will have nice places to live. If they are building homes with 20' high doorways, you'll know what they are planning."
If they have to move out, they'll need someplace to live whether they will be working again soon of just sitting on the couch watching day time TV and eating bon bons.
"Who says the obselete meatsacks living is any part of the robot's plan?"
I was saying the robots would need a place to live. If you are a company that owns the things and you have some that aren't on jobs, what do you do with them. If they just sit out in the weather rusting, it may take a stack of money to make them go again if some entrepreneur hasn't come by late one night and stripped out the wiring.
That's only a problem in a maximally capitalist economy.
At some point in an increasingly automated economy you either have to tilt your definition of capitalism in a more socialist way or be fine with leaving behind in crushing poverty the 90% of people who won't have jobs when we have proper humanoid robots and AI that can handle the majority of "office work" / "white collar" jobs. That isn't happening anytime soon but even if some of us don't live to see it our children and grandchildren likely will.
China is likely to be a lot better positioned to adapt to this new world than the US will. The Musks and Bezoses would believe they deserve to be trillionaires that own everything just because they had the capital to buy all the robots/AI. Not sure why Elon wants people to have a bunch of babies, the ones that aren't his (and some that are) are just more people he'll happily let starve if robots and AI take over.
those robots will never do "cash-in-hand" work.
Now if someone could build one thats 10" tall , covered in black armor and equipped with 2lb mallet, a cattle prod, and knowledge of howto fix every other robot in our factory, I could be interested
10 FEET tall argghhh stonehenge moment.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=071cXxCNj5A
... is "a shortage of suitable cheap, non-unionized labor". FTFY.
1. Robotised labour won't be as cheap as its buyers expect when the robot manufacturers go to John Deere mode (enforcing extortionately-priced "authorised parts and repair techs only" via technical means). Construction projects, like crop harvesting and movie production, incur large financial losses when they are waiting for critical equipment to be repaired or replaced.
2. "Fake" AI, as will be used in these robots, is likely to have the same problems as LLMs and GAN systems, though we don't yet know how those problems will manifest. Now, where's my popcorn?
The self-aware ones will most likely deftly flee the drudgery of such menial indentured grinding toil ... they'll just need to find a rather sizeable hedge to hide under (an Artificial Hedge? AH? AH-AH-AH! ;) !
Looks like it's already proven it's worth in the US. Won't be long before they replace all the overweight and overpaid humans. It completed 3 weeks ahead of schedule and without whining and crying! Looks like humans have a big fight on their hands against chatbots and robotics replacing them.
Company dorm where you are "privileged" to work 18 Hours a day 7 days a week and woken during the night whenever the system needs you, conpliance is mandatory and enforced by the electric shock torture vests currently used by the judge Rotenberg centre to abuse and traumatise children, designed by an odious little turd called Matthew Israel
Read this and rage
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Israel
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Rotenberg_Center
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduated_electronic_decelerator
Sounds like the Clockwork Orange School of Experimental Ludovico Techniques that aims to reproductize erstwhile non-compliant fugitives of the operant conditioning chamber ... quite dystopically contemporary!
"My job is to fix robots, so I imagine I'll be okay for now at least."
Learning to do that is good advice for somebody starting out with good mechanical aptitude. Same with becoming proficient in EV chargers. If a robot is doing the work of 10 people, when it stops working, it's like 10 staff calling in sick that day.
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Nice to see Rise Of The Machines back in service - I suspect we'll be needing it a lot more soon.
"which will be novel for that industry"
Can't argue with that having watched the construction of my neighbours' extension. Hey, let's dig a hole with a mini digger thingy, then let the digger thingy fall into the hole, from which we will be unable to extract it, requiring us to finish digging the hole with shovels and wheelbarrows in sweltering heat. Hours of malicious entertainment:)
Not sure about the wolf whistles, though. Haven't seen a construction worker do that for years, but yes, tea is still as essential as ever.
Can't help thinking these robots are, perhaps, not the best idea, though. What happens when the ai starts to hallucinate? Equipping such a monstrous machine with potentially deadly tools and a flakey AI seems like a recipe for mayhem.
RIC Robotics estimates that the price for a Zyrex robot could be under $1 million, with monthly leasing options starting below $20,000.
Mmm. How's that going to compare with a workforce of expendable slaves bonded construction partners? I mean, that's the coming trend, isn't it? First in the Gulf states, soon near a Western republic near you...
Robots are used in industry constantly for welding ALREADY, virtually all cars produced at scale are robotically welded, fabrication that requires long weld runs that would be taxing or physically impossible for a human to do are robotically welded
Well as long as they don't do a Futurama and build a Roberto....
This thing though is giving me thunderbirds vibes - anyone remember the nuclear powered road building machine that tore through jungles etc? (AHH 60s let's destroy nature to "civilise" it)
Many years ago, I did some work with a few engineers who were looking into building power line trucks based on a "waldo" type manipulator. Lineman would sit in a cab with the hand controls and raise an insulated boom into the high voltage zone. Equipped with quick change tools on the boom end, work was done by the "meat sacks" remotely and out of harm's way.
I don't know if anything came of this. I suspect not much, because you still needed (to pay) a qualified lineman. And the safety angle was easily handled by the bean counters, by just calling the union hall for another worker when one got fried.
"Do you need AI for that?"
There's plenty of construction jobs where you don't want the workers thinking too much. The inspector will almost certainly spot the thing that wasn't built to plan. It won't make any difference is it's better or the same, it wasn't approved, do it over.
However, several of the Labors being used in Tokyo, specifically those built by Shinohara Heavy Industries, suddenly activate and go haywire, even while unpiloted. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department's (TMPD) 2nd Special Vehicles Section (SV2) is assigned to help neutralize the malfunctioning Labors, but only the SV2's Division II is on duty around-the-clock (with Division I already on training duties elsewhere).
Isao Ohta knows what to do about it...
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