By Aaron Kesel
A brick-laying robot named Hadrian X can lay 200 concrete blocks per hour, with another A.I. – Hadrian 112 – attempting to lay 1,000 bricks as automation moves into the construction industry.
Hadrian X has broken its own record for speed-laying bricks, which is now up to 200 concrete blocks per hour—with the next goal at laying 240 blocks. The Hadrian X robot was created by Australian firm Fastbrick Robotics (FBR) and is named after the UK’s Hadrian Wall. Such a robot will surely replace construction workers worldwide due to being “cost efficient.”
“When you consider that manual brick and block laying costs globally vary anywhere from AUD10 (US$6.90) per square meter to AUD100 (US$69) per square meter, we are already cost competitive across a broad range of the market at 200 blocks per hour,” Fastbrick Robotics (FBR) CEO Mike Pivac said in a statement to New Atlas.
In the U.S., numbers of construction workers have fallen since the 1960s, with a precipitous drop after the 2008 recession and yet-unknown ramifications from the COVID-19 recession. Which is also pushing automation to take over in various industries, as Activist Post previously reported.
A group of scientists on the editorial board of Science Robotics are further calling for robots to do the “dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs” of infectious disease management by replacing certain hospital jobs like disinfecting robots combing rooms/floors and working in labs.
A recent report by A3, Association For Advancing Automation, further details all the ways that artificial intelligence and automation is being used in different industries to combat the coronavirus.
This all continues to highlight what Activist Post and this writer has detailed consistently for months — that advancement in robotics and A.I. is taking jobs daily more and more, warning that robots would soon take human jobs such as construction and farming robots, Angus and HRP-5P, being created to replace workers in the aforementioned industries. Activist Post has been sounding the alarm of the coming robot apocalypse.
Also see the article entitled: “Robots Already Replacing Bank Tellers, Drivers, News Anchors, Restaurant and Warehouse Employees. Will Your Job Be Next?” written by B.N. Frank.
See: 177 Different Ways to Generate Extra Income
As this writer has written previously on Steemit, we are shifting towards a working world with little or no humans, as automation and artificial intelligence begins to take over our jobs. It’s cheaper to hire a few robots which don’t need rest and benefits than to hire a few humans who need healthcare and retirement funds.
Last year, robots took a record number of jobs in the U.S. according to Robotic Industries Association (RIA) as Activist Post reported. Now, with the impetus of the coronavirus the number of jobs occupied by robots could multiply quite rapidly. Oxford Economics also published its own report warning that accelerating technological advances in automation, engineering, energy storage, artificial intelligence, and machine learning have the potential to reshape the world in 2020 through 2030s, displacing at least 20 million workers.
The Brookings Institution said in a report last month that “any coronavirus-related recession is likely to bring about a spike in labor-replacing automation … Automation happens in bursts, concentrated especially in bad times such as in the wake of economic shocks, when humans become relatively more expensive as firms’ revenues rapidly decline.”
Still, at least for now the record holder for laying bricks belongs to humans. The record for brick-laying is an incredible 915 in an hour, set in 1987 by American bricklayer Bob Boil. You can watch the video of Hadrian X laying bricks below.
**By [@An0nkn0wledge](https://hive.blog/@an0nkn0wledge)**
Aaron Kesel writes for Activist Post.
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Automated Construction: Brick Laying Robot Lays 200 Concrete Blocks Per Hour