..and we all can go to the weekly Carrousel for entertainment!
Posted on 01/21/2015 12:38:39 PM PST by Rusty0604
hy pay an expensive bulldozer driver for foundation work when a drone from the sky paired with an unmanned bulldozer on the ground can compute 3-D plans and do the job better and faster?
Construction workers move over. You are next to be unneeded, unwanted, and unloved.
The Wall Street Journal reports Drones’ Next Job: Construction Work.
Construction-equipment maker Komatsu Ltd. has plans to solve a potential shortage of construction workers in Japan: Let drones and driverless bulldozers do part of the work.
Tokyo-based Komatsu said Tuesday it plans to use unmanned aircraft, bulldozers and excavators to automate much of the early foundation work on construction sites.
Under Komatsu’s plans, U.S.-made drones would scan job sites from the air and send images to computers to build three-dimensional models of the terrain. Komatsu’s unmanned bulldozers and excavators would then use those models to carry out design plans, digging holes and moving earth.
The drones, made by San Francisco startup Skycatch Inc., and construction equipment would move along largely preprogrammed routes. The goal is to automate the construction site, leaving humans to program the machines and then push a button to send them to work. Human operators would also monitor progress and can jump in to take control of a machine if necessary.
(Excerpt) Read more at globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com ...
..and we all can go to the weekly Carrousel for entertainment!
Just set up terrestrial gps on a site and let the drone do that stuff.
It will be more accurate and reduce man hours.
We already have machines manufacturing a good portion of homes and buildings off site and then we slap that stuff together in no time flat.
Pouring floors on site doesn’t really makes sense anymore.
Nor does slapping walls together.
Just do that at some central factory and run the infrastructure for wiring, outlets, plumbing, etc at the factory and then hime run that stuff to IDF’s and risers, where it can all be joined to feed back to MDF’s, roofs and basements.
oh the horror movies I could write....
Many of the construction workers I’ve known are really not capable of doing anything else. It’s the last employment opportunities for people who can’t get through schooling or can’t stop drinking.
I don’t see a lot of construction workers retraining for something else. What else will there be that isn’t being done better by a computer?
Hey - it’s Obamaland.
The happiest place on Earth (happiness is mandatory). :D
So that’s what happened to all those “shovel ready” jobs.
AT Teamster’s Machine Operator pay rates, it doesn’t take much more to justify automating those jobs, especially for simple tasks.
Good luck with that. There’s a lot more to equipment operation than plugging in GPS coordinates. You might think we are just a bunch of dumb dozer jocks but I assure you that’s not the case. Finish road grading by Trimble is already taking place. Mass excavating in varying conditions, good luck.
Already done in 1974:
Yep, unions can price themselves out of a job.
Over the next two decades, machines will drive themselves and 5.7 million truck driving jobs will vanish.
Many pooh-pooh that idea for insurance reasons, but costs savings and improved technology suggest the trend is inevitable.
Please consider the Wall Street Journal report Daddy, What Was a Truck Driver?
Ubiquitous, autonomous trucks are “close to inevitable,” says Ted Scott, director of engineering and safety policy for the American Trucking Associations. “We are going to have a driverless truck because there will be money in it,” adds James Barrett, president of 105-rig Road Scholar Transport Inc. in Scranton, Pa.
Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/08/message-to-57-million-truck-drivers-no.html#5tlZlfZ31qoWlPok.99
Don’t need em.
Even strawberry pickers are losing their yobs as machines are able to detect optimal time to pick and can even sort more efficiently
When I was a highly paid engineer with a Fortune 500 defense company I realized that practically everything I did could be automated to a large extent. I wrote up a requirements document for a job and took it to my boss. He handed it back and said, “You’ll be the first one I lay off.” That ended that. But it’s a competitive world (except for defense companies with a lock on a legacy product.) So, the competition will automate and start taking new products away from the old guard.
A high ranking manager told me, “Our business model is to make stuff cost as much as we can get away with.”
I am very skeptical that there will ever be a ‘driverless truck’.
First, I am familiar with the technologies used by Google in their driverless car pilot program. Not only is it expensive, and ill suited for rain/sleet/snow...but the computing power necessary is huge.
And somebody has to maneuver the truck at the dock, at weigh scales....fuel it up on long hauls...tarp it, put chains on the tires...put out warning markers if it breaks down.
I honestly don’t see this happening anytime soon.
The farmers in CA only hired the illegals to harvest because they were cheaper than the machines. Not going to be so much the case anymore.
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