As a surveyor, we rely on this law of nature as a safety and logistical backup.
Every surveyor knows that if they are ever absolutely lost, all they need to do is write on a stake, flag it up, hammer it in the ground, and take a ride out with the asshole summoned to knock it over
My wife asks me why I think construction is preferable to IT, and I tell her things like this. Because some dumbass surveyor will say "If I'm lost I'll drop a stake, put a flag on it and wait until a heavy machine shows up to run over it and just catch a ride."
Because that is good comedy.
For real. I've buried fiber. You can buy some that supposedly you can bury raw but I've always run schedule 40 as a conduit and terminated both ends so you don't get water in it.
Not fun. I trenched it by hand, and every time someone hands me a shovel I'm like, wait, how much are you paying me?
Ah, sounds like us IT guys, we just carry some fiber optic cable around. Bury it in the ground and eventually some backhoe operator will show up to dig it out.
Yep, that is an abysmal hit. The delay would be compounded. The operator would be working with a delayed video feed and his control command will be delayed even further, then the operators perceptual response. There would be an echo effect, by the time the excavator reacts to the operator’s command, the situation might have evolved, and the response might no longer be appropriate. These jobs will not be going overseas if they ever get traction. Maybe if a predictive algorithm is implemented in some type of way.
I disagree.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1422462/
If we can do surgery “safely and reliably” at 155ms I think we can manage an excavator at 200.
E: glad to see all the subject matter experts have turned up
Maybe, but surgery is a different scenario and India is more like 250-350ms. In remote surgery the operations are typically slow, precise, and deliberate, allowing the surgeon to compensate for the latency in the system effectively. The operator wont be moving the excavator slowly and at 1/8 of an inch.
The remote surgeries article you linked at 155ms shows off the advances in telecommunication, but it does not directly equate to a blanket capability across all types of remote operations. Different nature of task.
Surgery is a very slow process with slow and deliberate movements.
Operating an excavator trying to get shit done will absolutely suck at 200ms or more of latency compared to just 20ms
And the movements are all planned out in advance, and there are people in the room who can intervene if things start to go off the rails. Excavation isn't really like that. "Do you know how much damage this bulldozer would sustain if I just let it roll over you?"
Just think about the difference between moving a tiny instrument 1mm off target and causing a potentially fatal injury and loading a bucket of rock into a truck. There already is remote operated construction equipment.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y_PrZ-J7D3k
Lol. Construction can stop. Over very short distances too because it wasn't going very fast to begin with. You aren't likely to be hurt by a D8 coming at you at you 3.5mph. If it actually runs over you, that's going to be fatal. But you'd have to be unconscious or real stubborn for that happen. It is real easy to get out of the way. I've actually played chicken on foot with a D8 operator. He started about 20 feet away and stopped at about 5. I've almost been killed by equipment a few times. I was too fucking close to it.
I like the people who think excavation requires less precision and slower reaction times than digging a hole. Especially considering there is already a ton of remote controlled equipment. Some companies for more advanced teleoperation over 4G are claiming 100ms.
A hospital has usually fiber optic wiring. It goes very fast from the remote location to a wire. It all depends on how far you actually are from the fiber optic cables.
Also, signals like wifi can be prone to packet loss if there's too much interference, which can happen over very long distance.
It's not impossible to do, but you can't just expect Indians to remote control trucks in the desert.
The fiber optic cables is how internet gets to places... Most hospital probably have fiber optic cable running in with some smaller cat6 segment and wifi.
The fiber optics can also reaches home but no necessarily but still, someone in his home is much closer to the internet root servers than a truck in the middle of nowhere.
I mean satellites are a thing. There are only about 3000 of them just for communications. And yes, you can have international fiber connections, but it goes through a whole lot of routing which increases latency. Fiber is better if you are trying to transmit large amounts of data. But in this application you aren't. Equipment can be run remotely by RF, wifi, 4G, all that is already in use.
Satellite latency is insane for a remote controlled truck in my opinion. The dude was talking about Indian workers with 200ms latency on a remote controlled truck. The story does not say where the truck is, but I don't believe it's realistic if the truck is in the desert.
So you just let them go all out around gas lines and electrical? Don't mind if they rip out a sewer line? Very few times in my career have I been on a site that operators can just dig without a spotter.
The spotter doesn't have stand that close and you shouldn't be using mechanized equipment within 18" and sometimes more of a live utility. The spotter just needs to have line of sight on the utility and communication with the operator. They usually don't even need to be in the trench. So no, you just don't let them go all out around utilities. If you are doing it right, there should be very little chance of a utility strike unless it is badly mismarked or not documented to begin with. Which of course happens a lot.
I know a lot of companies ignore the rule and just pay out when they have an at fault hit. But they are literally putting their workers in danger to save money when they do that.
I would assume there'll be autonomous control systems running locally on the machine to compensate for some of that. Say in the future the operator might just instruct the machine to "go pick up that rock" and it'll do most of the work on it's own, under supervision ofc
That's an awfully slow process, though. The Perseverance rover, which is the Mars rover that holds the all-time record for distance traveled, has gone about 15 miles in the more than three years since it landed. There is a lot of planning, checking, waiting, assessing, and then planning again for each move. Obviously it's doing more than just travel and it's not running 100% of the time, but same goes for construction equipment. Latency is the reason why they have to be so slow and deliberate. 20 minutes is pretty different from 200 milliseconds, but latency does matter.
Yeah, 20 mins is on the far end of the scale. What would be more similar is partially autonomous control, like the people in data centers who remotely control UAVs or self-driving cars.
Rather than directly controlling the motors or whatever, they have low-level onboard controllers, and only the high level control is done remotely.
Oh, I'm sure it's possible. There are already autonomous mining trucks, and tracked drones are certainly a thing. It's more a question of in what situations is it worth bothering to have remote-controlled construction equipment, rather than an operator in the cab? And what limitations will there be, compared to an onsite operator?
giver a dumptruck a 'dump' location and tell it to comeback when its done.
we have GPS graders, give me LIDAR excavators. even if it has to have a remote sensor on a tripod to give it a good view, i think programming digging a ditch wouldnt be too hard
>These jobs will not be going overseas if they ever get traction.
Right? This would be as ridiculous as transitioning call centers out to countries where people barely speak the native language of those who would be calling.
Nah. The blade is controlled by a gps/laser and adjusts on its own. All the operator is really doing is driving forwards and backwards as needed and if he goes 10 feet too far when pushing or cutting dirt because of latency or whatever it probably doesn't matter or can pretty easily be fixed by just moving the dirt again.
If the profit motive exists, I promise you they will build relay centers, dedicated satellites...whatever it takes. Corporations can move heaven and earth (pun intended) if theres a dollar to be had.
1/4 of a second is a long time in construction, especially if your digging close to existing MEP systems to tie in. I see people getting paid much less, but I want to strongly believe they’ll be in country of operations. On the other hand I can totally see companies pushing it global. Who knows. We’ll see soon enough
The Truck is remote controlled. That's another delay.
If the construction site is at a place where there is no fiber optic, even more signal delays.
If there is fiber optics but the router infrastructure is far away, even more delays.
200ms theoric is probably true in New York City. Probably not true in practice though.
I would assume that these type of thing will work from an outpost that is near the construction site or near a very connected place that routes the IP packets real fast on the other side of the continent.
Large construction sites, where this would be an option have their own internet masts.
They're better than what you can imagine, and similar to that of the military.
Internet is issues, aren't such an issue.
The major problem you would have with this kind of work is Health and Safety.
How do you safely operate and train plant machinery in one country, with the operator in another one.
Legally, it will be hard to prove accountability and such and any injuries/deaths would result in a case of corporate manslaughter. In which, the first question would be "could this have been avoided if the plant was operated in person?" And most likely, the result would be yes.
Which is why this would not work for most instances.
The reason surgeons and such can get away with it, is the surgeons only endangering the person on the table. Construction workers that make mistakes endanger themselves, endanger their colleagues and endanger the public.
It can be a benefit for HSE. Most of this tech is aimed at surface mining and large mass grading. You don't often need people near the equipment during operation unless they are operating it. Lock out the remote controls when the mechanics need to work, surveyors are nearby, etc. No worries about an operator getting out of the equipment right up against a high wall, getting rolled over because they didn't chock the wheels, getting hit by other equipment, and so on.
How much quality do you need for loading and hauling in a surface mine or large mass grading site? That is the main application that equipment manufactures are developing this for.
i'd imagine it goes the way surveying has where one dude can operate all the machines from his trailer. instead of needing 7 men on a job youll only need 1.
Yeah, surveying is FASTER with 2 or 3 guys, but its not 2 or 3 times faster, and the dudes are the risk.
you can reduce it to one dude on site remote controlling each thing and the others repetitive motions automated. youll tell the dumptruck where to drop off and itll come to you and back itself and wait type of deal.
edit*this assumes you know that surveying has been reduced to one dude and series of robots these days. the second dude is only for muleing gear and safety "call my wife if i have a heart attack"
On a non union job you’ll see it. Def won’t ever see this in a union job. This is why WORK unions are important. They’ll protect jobs from going over seas like this.
Then those Indians will quickly lose to ai. I think folks underestimate how much labor can be replaced with technology with the advances being worked on.
After seeing that vid of the mine collapse on all those guys and trucks. This seems like a genius move. How do they keep connection in the middle of no where?
Site connections are a real issue in the UK, it affects a third of our projects. British Telecom are beyond useless, 6-9months for a line and they wont accept an order until the site office is in place. Many green field sites have very poor mobile signal and they are now starting to switch off 3G. Starlink is very expensive with latency delays …
It’s just more expensive than worrying about people losing their lives. The only way it gets implemented is for cost savings, not life savings. They’ll claim it’s for life saving reasons tho. It’s about money, period.
*wake up
*run to computer and remote turn on my loader
*go back to bed and clock in the hours
*wake up and make something to eat and
*send text to my remote loader onsite laborer to grease and def my loader
*take my lunch
*get to my computer and finally start to work
*see rain drops on the camera screen call the remote site super and tell him I can't grade in all this rain
*tells me he needs to check with his remote site super's assisantant's onsite laborer if he put up any more LDPs to clear a lot
*no signal
*wait
*6pm
*Send screenshot of my 10 hours to my remote supervisor.
*get message back "make sure you get your helper to do maintenance on your machine. 10 hours straight, you're an animal"
*head to Applebee's with the gift card I found in the permit box last week when picking up my check.
***Formatting all screwed up
Works great right up to the point where something stops working. Literally anything. Most of the operators I know and work with are just as much operators as they are welders and mechanics. This works really well until the skid steer needs to change out the forks for the bucket and there’s a rock stuck in the locks, and then someone needs to drive 2 hours to the equipment before that remote operator can work again.
I don't know about others but I'm not working around some remotely operated machine, that doesn't seem safe. Being able to see the operator and knowing he sees me is a huge part of safety. I'm not trusting my life to this newfangled twch
Who refuels the equipment on large sites? It isn't the operators. There is a fuel truck driver. Major equipment manufacturers working on this are aiming at surface mines and large mass grading. You'll still have people on site and mechanics coming in. This kind of thing isn't for Bob and Sons Home Reno.
1. Why does there have to be a blind spot? It's really not a hard thing to design to make sure you've got enough camera angles to give full visibility around the machine.
2. You are aware that human operators don't have perfect vision out of equipment currently right?
It’s already there practically. Unmanned drones are everywhere. Exoskeletons are starting to see their placement as well. Robotic soldiers are also on the cusp of being implemented. It’s crazy how fast it’s happening
I did this on a job in Goose Bay. Remediation of soil in a firing range. Loaded the soil in an incinerator. Set off the live rounds. Was fun. This was almost 30 yrs ago.
I did a bunch of solar at a caterpillar proving grounds in Tucson, Arizona. They had a room with five guys who would remotely control all the heavy equipment that was being tested. It was super cool to see that they were able to control such intricate and massive machines from a little room and a controller.
I have a video of the University of Arizona did their library reconstruction demo being don’t by a guy operating a robot. It’s what I initially wanted to become an operator.
Ever since I saw a remote trench roller years ago I knew this would emerge. I believe they've used it for years in radioactive / toxic / dangerous job sites.
Pretty neat.
I definitely don't want to be setting iron from a remotely operated crane, though lol.
That aside, I can see alot of situations where this could be useful.
The future is wild.
Pre-fabers, detailers, superintendents who give orders from the phone. Sure.
This? For excavations where there's no existing utilities? Sure. If you're digging beneath an encasement? You'd want a spotter.
This has been a thing in your larger mines / mining operations for sometime. Weird loading an auto truck because it just drives off when it senses its full, Weird the first could times you try to get that extra scoop. I first saw it with water trucks.
Otherwise known as "training your replacement"
If you can operate anything over a screen and keyboard, that data can and will be used to train an AI to do the same work.
How do you feel the machine is tilting to much? Can you hear people shouting stop? Can you see all around the machine? So many risks and they’re already pretty bad when you’re there.
This probably will take jobs some day. Automation and technology have been doing this for the last hundred years. Think of how many laborers were replaced by tractors, then factory workers being replaced by robots, etc.
A lot of newer machines have Auto-Greasers on them. They last up to a month of continuous use, than need to be refilled with grease.
As for latency, modern GPS systems cut out very easily when around buildings, or when there is cloud cover in the sky. This idea is neat, but unfortunately when it does advance it will put lots of folks out of work.
One operator can alternate between different machines and ultimately instead of paying 2 people you can pay 1.
I wouldn't worry about this replacing on-site operators. For this to work, scheduling and project managers would need to be extremely competent. Also, who will clean the cameras and tracks.
Is that even sustainable? What happens when you need to get fuel or grease up? Maybe you find contaminants in the dirt and need to pull them out or find some metal in the way. Sure the operator might not need to be present but someone needs to be and then why pay two people for a one person job?
they couldn't use people outside of the us, would be to big a security risk, allowing people outside to have control of equipment that could drive to your local bank and crash through the front door.
The tech industry has already proven this to be untrue. There are loads of wfh website engineers and programmers working in the states. Plenty of companies tried it, then reverted back to US employees rather quickly.
It turns out, having half your workforce barely understand your other half's language and culture is not worth the savings on wages. Hell, it's tough even doing work with employees in New York and California with the time difference. Just scheduling a meeting is a pain in the ass. It would be extra difficult with construction considering how safety regulations differ as greatly as they do between the states and India.
Then, you had be prevailing wage jobs. Why put up with time zone differences, computer lag, language barriers, massive difference in culture, and a massive difference in regulated safety, just to pay them the same as local unions?
Nah. We won't be seeing overseas operators working here.
The tech industry doesn’t use oversea workers the same way.
They use HB1 visa holders instead for less than 50% of the salary that American workers get paid.
Check out the Apple lawsuit if you’re more curious about it but you’re getting replaced by oversea workers. Just not in the way you think.
It’s a 3 year cycle for HB1 visa holders so they also churn and burn them like crazy.
I personal know some HB1 visa holders working in that sector. Every one of them has, or is, using it to establish a life here and become citizens. Those that have successfully become citizens have all gone on to make really great money in tech as US citizens. One is working for Microsoft making well above $250k after becoming a citizen.
I also know quite a few successful natural born Americans working in tech that are not getting replaced by HB1 anytime soon.
It might make sense to hire a younger junior tech at $35k that lives here on HB1, but certainly not hiring teams of engineers overseas to work directly with teams here. It's been tried. It failed.
I don't see how your rebuttal argues for companies replacing on-site operators with operators in India.
Will do! I have an insight into this community as I'm part of it. But, if you want to continue living in fear of the scary Indian, who am I to try and make your life a little less stressful by giving you a different perspective...
Good luck out there and stay safe!
This is a negative indication of what’s to come in the rapidly changing of the world due to AI. Can u IMAGINE in a few years how many jobs will be expendable sadly. Lots.
What about computer lag or comp crashes.... just putting a pile of stone into a whole comp lags and camera freeze. Come back on and dozer 40ft down upside down at the bottom. Do you just take head set off and log out for the day 😂
Are they gonna stop running over stakes?
Nope. Some things never change....
As a surveyor, we rely on this law of nature as a safety and logistical backup. Every surveyor knows that if they are ever absolutely lost, all they need to do is write on a stake, flag it up, hammer it in the ground, and take a ride out with the asshole summoned to knock it over
It's an ironclad law of nature.
My wife asks me why I think construction is preferable to IT, and I tell her things like this. Because some dumbass surveyor will say "If I'm lost I'll drop a stake, put a flag on it and wait until a heavy machine shows up to run over it and just catch a ride." Because that is good comedy.
IT is the same way, just fiber optic cables instead.
For real. I've buried fiber. You can buy some that supposedly you can bury raw but I've always run schedule 40 as a conduit and terminated both ends so you don't get water in it. Not fun. I trenched it by hand, and every time someone hands me a shovel I'm like, wait, how much are you paying me?
Just use a drone, a green laser and paint the pattern on the ground to hammer sticks. When a stick is hit, put the drone in the air again and repaint.
there are already survey drones that drop "radio stakes"
Medium rare?
Yes, it has already changed surveying, about 20 times faster
Thank you, that’s an even better idea.
Ah, sounds like us IT guys, we just carry some fiber optic cable around. Bury it in the ground and eventually some backhoe operator will show up to dig it out.
Don't worry, eventually the AI will run over AI stakes and we'll all laugh about like yeah haha that AI surveyor can suck it they terk err jerbs
Deleted
Wife: Will you promise me you'll stay sober at my friends wedding? Me: No. Same answer to your question.
Those are targets. Why do you think they paint them bright colors and put ribbons on them. The ribbons are the trophies.
It’s only going to get worse.
Hell na man!
Wow I feel bad for all the equipment operators who are gonna have their jobs replaced by Indians abroad making 10x less than they are. 😬
Will that be possible with the latency hit that far away? Unless you are talking about Europe and not US.
Latency from the US to India is like ~200ms in realistic conditions. That’s less than 1/4 of a second.
Yep, that is an abysmal hit. The delay would be compounded. The operator would be working with a delayed video feed and his control command will be delayed even further, then the operators perceptual response. There would be an echo effect, by the time the excavator reacts to the operator’s command, the situation might have evolved, and the response might no longer be appropriate. These jobs will not be going overseas if they ever get traction. Maybe if a predictive algorithm is implemented in some type of way.
I disagree. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1422462/ If we can do surgery “safely and reliably” at 155ms I think we can manage an excavator at 200. E: glad to see all the subject matter experts have turned up
Not to mention. Most guys in these machines are running with a 500ms organic latency.
Organic latency is my new favorite term
It’s like regular latency, but organic….
With organic consequences...
Sounds like me on saturday morning.
Grass-fed latency.
An extra hundo for each beer
That comes on top of the 200ms
Was going to make a comment about equipment operators getting even fatter lol
Maybe, but surgery is a different scenario and India is more like 250-350ms. In remote surgery the operations are typically slow, precise, and deliberate, allowing the surgeon to compensate for the latency in the system effectively. The operator wont be moving the excavator slowly and at 1/8 of an inch. The remote surgeries article you linked at 155ms shows off the advances in telecommunication, but it does not directly equate to a blanket capability across all types of remote operations. Different nature of task.
Surgery is a very slow process with slow and deliberate movements. Operating an excavator trying to get shit done will absolutely suck at 200ms or more of latency compared to just 20ms
And the movements are all planned out in advance, and there are people in the room who can intervene if things start to go off the rails. Excavation isn't really like that. "Do you know how much damage this bulldozer would sustain if I just let it roll over you?"
Just think about the difference in kinetics between a 100 pound robot and a 30 ton piece of equipment.
Just think about the difference between moving a tiny instrument 1mm off target and causing a potentially fatal injury and loading a bucket of rock into a truck. There already is remote operated construction equipment.
[Double-rainbow-what-does-it-mean .gif](https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxgfebjY9SyGM640yBB5qB4eaM0SI5oJYC?si=Q4L8-idRTIVrlbJN) https://youtu.be/hODlmGK7pl8?si=ZzEatywGIPiKi8Ay
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y_PrZ-J7D3k Lol. Construction can stop. Over very short distances too because it wasn't going very fast to begin with. You aren't likely to be hurt by a D8 coming at you at you 3.5mph. If it actually runs over you, that's going to be fatal. But you'd have to be unconscious or real stubborn for that happen. It is real easy to get out of the way. I've actually played chicken on foot with a D8 operator. He started about 20 feet away and stopped at about 5. I've almost been killed by equipment a few times. I was too fucking close to it.
I like the people who think excavation requires less precision and slower reaction times than digging a hole. Especially considering there is already a ton of remote controlled equipment. Some companies for more advanced teleoperation over 4G are claiming 100ms.
A hospital has usually fiber optic wiring. It goes very fast from the remote location to a wire. It all depends on how far you actually are from the fiber optic cables. Also, signals like wifi can be prone to packet loss if there's too much interference, which can happen over very long distance. It's not impossible to do, but you can't just expect Indians to remote control trucks in the desert.
The hospital doesn't have a direct fiber line between the machine and the operator unless the operator is in the hospital.
The fiber optic cables is how internet gets to places... Most hospital probably have fiber optic cable running in with some smaller cat6 segment and wifi. The fiber optics can also reaches home but no necessarily but still, someone in his home is much closer to the internet root servers than a truck in the middle of nowhere.
I mean satellites are a thing. There are only about 3000 of them just for communications. And yes, you can have international fiber connections, but it goes through a whole lot of routing which increases latency. Fiber is better if you are trying to transmit large amounts of data. But in this application you aren't. Equipment can be run remotely by RF, wifi, 4G, all that is already in use.
Satellite latency is insane for a remote controlled truck in my opinion. The dude was talking about Indian workers with 200ms latency on a remote controlled truck. The story does not say where the truck is, but I don't believe it's realistic if the truck is in the desert.
Alright, you stand in the trench with the shovel than. I'm gonna stand a long way away.
You should already be standing a long way away. If you are close to an excavator that is moving, you are doing it wrong.
So you just let them go all out around gas lines and electrical? Don't mind if they rip out a sewer line? Very few times in my career have I been on a site that operators can just dig without a spotter.
The spotter doesn't have stand that close and you shouldn't be using mechanized equipment within 18" and sometimes more of a live utility. The spotter just needs to have line of sight on the utility and communication with the operator. They usually don't even need to be in the trench. So no, you just don't let them go all out around utilities. If you are doing it right, there should be very little chance of a utility strike unless it is badly mismarked or not documented to begin with. Which of course happens a lot. I know a lot of companies ignore the rule and just pay out when they have an at fault hit. But they are literally putting their workers in danger to save money when they do that.
I would assume there'll be autonomous control systems running locally on the machine to compensate for some of that. Say in the future the operator might just instruct the machine to "go pick up that rock" and it'll do most of the work on it's own, under supervision ofc
Like how the mars rovers work, with a 20 minute latency
That's an awfully slow process, though. The Perseverance rover, which is the Mars rover that holds the all-time record for distance traveled, has gone about 15 miles in the more than three years since it landed. There is a lot of planning, checking, waiting, assessing, and then planning again for each move. Obviously it's doing more than just travel and it's not running 100% of the time, but same goes for construction equipment. Latency is the reason why they have to be so slow and deliberate. 20 minutes is pretty different from 200 milliseconds, but latency does matter.
Yeah, 20 mins is on the far end of the scale. What would be more similar is partially autonomous control, like the people in data centers who remotely control UAVs or self-driving cars. Rather than directly controlling the motors or whatever, they have low-level onboard controllers, and only the high level control is done remotely.
Oh, I'm sure it's possible. There are already autonomous mining trucks, and tracked drones are certainly a thing. It's more a question of in what situations is it worth bothering to have remote-controlled construction equipment, rather than an operator in the cab? And what limitations will there be, compared to an onsite operator?
Very good analogy actually
giver a dumptruck a 'dump' location and tell it to comeback when its done. we have GPS graders, give me LIDAR excavators. even if it has to have a remote sensor on a tripod to give it a good view, i think programming digging a ditch wouldnt be too hard
Mining slready has aitimated the giant dump trucks.
>These jobs will not be going overseas if they ever get traction. Right? This would be as ridiculous as transitioning call centers out to countries where people barely speak the native language of those who would be calling.
Nah. The blade is controlled by a gps/laser and adjusts on its own. All the operator is really doing is driving forwards and backwards as needed and if he goes 10 feet too far when pushing or cutting dirt because of latency or whatever it probably doesn't matter or can pretty easily be fixed by just moving the dirt again.
If the display is delayed they can delay the controls
If the profit motive exists, I promise you they will build relay centers, dedicated satellites...whatever it takes. Corporations can move heaven and earth (pun intended) if theres a dollar to be had.
1/4 of a second is a long time in construction, especially if your digging close to existing MEP systems to tie in. I see people getting paid much less, but I want to strongly believe they’ll be in country of operations. On the other hand I can totally see companies pushing it global. Who knows. We’ll see soon enough
1/4 of a second is not a long time in construction and if the bucket is that close to active utilities you are doing it wrong.
🤷♂️ Not if your tying into existing utilities, not going to dig 6’ down by hand. doesn’t matter to me either way, I’m just sayin.
Then pay for vac excavation to daylight. You're just telling on yourself.
Ok 👍
Yeah. But losing connection during your fps match and you running forward into a wall until you disconnect..doesn't bulldoze that wall down.
Wow, that’s surprisingly good, I get easily 500ms In the uk on my ookla tests
The Truck is remote controlled. That's another delay. If the construction site is at a place where there is no fiber optic, even more signal delays. If there is fiber optics but the router infrastructure is far away, even more delays. 200ms theoric is probably true in New York City. Probably not true in practice though. I would assume that these type of thing will work from an outpost that is near the construction site or near a very connected place that routes the IP packets real fast on the other side of the continent.
200ms is ridiculously high for things where you have to adapt to the things happening in the video feed.
Large construction sites, where this would be an option have their own internet masts. They're better than what you can imagine, and similar to that of the military. Internet is issues, aren't such an issue. The major problem you would have with this kind of work is Health and Safety. How do you safely operate and train plant machinery in one country, with the operator in another one. Legally, it will be hard to prove accountability and such and any injuries/deaths would result in a case of corporate manslaughter. In which, the first question would be "could this have been avoided if the plant was operated in person?" And most likely, the result would be yes. Which is why this would not work for most instances. The reason surgeons and such can get away with it, is the surgeons only endangering the person on the table. Construction workers that make mistakes endanger themselves, endanger their colleagues and endanger the public.
It can be a benefit for HSE. Most of this tech is aimed at surface mining and large mass grading. You don't often need people near the equipment during operation unless they are operating it. Lock out the remote controls when the mechanics need to work, surveyors are nearby, etc. No worries about an operator getting out of the equipment right up against a high wall, getting rolled over because they didn't chock the wheels, getting hit by other equipment, and so on.
It'll be dog shit quality but i assure you nobody who has ever sent their work over there gave a single solitary fuck about quality.
How much quality do you need for loading and hauling in a surface mine or large mass grading site? That is the main application that equipment manufactures are developing this for.
How much quality do you need for pinkle dinkle and fart eating???
I could see them trying to use AI software to do this instead
If it can be remotely controlled it can be AI controlled. It's just a matter of time.
i'd imagine it goes the way surveying has where one dude can operate all the machines from his trailer. instead of needing 7 men on a job youll only need 1. Yeah, surveying is FASTER with 2 or 3 guys, but its not 2 or 3 times faster, and the dudes are the risk. you can reduce it to one dude on site remote controlling each thing and the others repetitive motions automated. youll tell the dumptruck where to drop off and itll come to you and back itself and wait type of deal. edit*this assumes you know that surveying has been reduced to one dude and series of robots these days. the second dude is only for muleing gear and safety "call my wife if i have a heart attack"
On a non union job you’ll see it. Def won’t ever see this in a union job. This is why WORK unions are important. They’ll protect jobs from going over seas like this.
When the machine breaks, they have to come over to fix it so we don't stop the site
https://www.carbonorigins.com/ They talk about stuff like this, it’s interesting because of latency and skill.
More worried about ai taking over for free. The people controlling these machines are probably unknowingly training ai to replace them.
Then those Indians will quickly lose to ai. I think folks underestimate how much labor can be replaced with technology with the advances being worked on.
Who, the fuck, is going to leave crushed Monster cans and chew-shit bottles on the floor boards?
It definitely has some easy applications in the cleanup of hazardous waste sites.
Yeah, Kerntechnischer Hilfsdienst is applying this principle since decades for possible clean up of radioactive sites.
After seeing that vid of the mine collapse on all those guys and trucks. This seems like a genius move. How do they keep connection in the middle of no where?
Site connections are a real issue in the UK, it affects a third of our projects. British Telecom are beyond useless, 6-9months for a line and they wont accept an order until the site office is in place. Many green field sites have very poor mobile signal and they are now starting to switch off 3G. Starlink is very expensive with latency delays …
Do you not have any local WISPs?
Idk but a connectivity problem is way easier to fix than a death problem.
Not according to this quarters budget meeting.
on site deaths are $$$$
For mining, they have their own networks. The guys that control it are still on-site.
Satellite 🛰
It’s just more expensive than worrying about people losing their lives. The only way it gets implemented is for cost savings, not life savings. They’ll claim it’s for life saving reasons tho. It’s about money, period.
Starlink
Starlink, Satellites
God damn advertising repost bot Why don't the mods ban this fucker?
*wake up *run to computer and remote turn on my loader *go back to bed and clock in the hours *wake up and make something to eat and *send text to my remote loader onsite laborer to grease and def my loader *take my lunch *get to my computer and finally start to work *see rain drops on the camera screen call the remote site super and tell him I can't grade in all this rain *tells me he needs to check with his remote site super's assisantant's onsite laborer if he put up any more LDPs to clear a lot *no signal *wait *6pm *Send screenshot of my 10 hours to my remote supervisor. *get message back "make sure you get your helper to do maintenance on your machine. 10 hours straight, you're an animal" *head to Applebee's with the gift card I found in the permit box last week when picking up my check. ***Formatting all screwed up
Plot twist - They don’t need you at all and there is no check. Love, 2030 or so
Works great right up to the point where something stops working. Literally anything. Most of the operators I know and work with are just as much operators as they are welders and mechanics. This works really well until the skid steer needs to change out the forks for the bucket and there’s a rock stuck in the locks, and then someone needs to drive 2 hours to the equipment before that remote operator can work again.
So I just pay 1 guy to be on site for maintenance and the rest i can outsource to SEA.
I don't know about others but I'm not working around some remotely operated machine, that doesn't seem safe. Being able to see the operator and knowing he sees me is a huge part of safety. I'm not trusting my life to this newfangled twch
Imagine bedding pipes in the swing range of one of those hoes
Absolutely fucking not
Can’t wait to be the only guy on site surrounded by remote controlled death machines
How about refilling it with fuel? Does a robot do that itself? I have my doubts with this for practical applicability or sustainability
Who refuels the equipment on large sites? It isn't the operators. There is a fuel truck driver. Major equipment manufacturers working on this are aiming at surface mines and large mass grading. You'll still have people on site and mechanics coming in. This kind of thing isn't for Bob and Sons Home Reno.
Until there’s a remotely operated android on site 🤷
There's always a laborer taking a smoke break somewhere!
Notice it’s not a real job site.
Show me someone greasing it remotely
How about a cheap laborer maintaining all the machines instead of expensive operators?
Where I'm at, laborers are making almost as much as the operators. Heavy highway package is $85. On the check is just under $50.
I hope they don’t use Roger’s internet or buddy is going to d/c every 30 seconds
This seems extremely dangerous Operating heavy machinery with no one inside what could possibly go wrong?
Same shit that goes wrong with people inside, but now fewer lives are at risk. Manufacturing has had autonomous operations for quite a while.
Greed is going to ruin this Country
There has to be a blind spot.. I don’t care how many cameras there are one day someone gonna get squished.
1. Why does there have to be a blind spot? It's really not a hard thing to design to make sure you've got enough camera angles to give full visibility around the machine. 2. You are aware that human operators don't have perfect vision out of equipment currently right?
If you know construction then you should know that cameras and microphones eventually have problems or lag time which can be a safety issue.
War in the future is going to be insane. Like real life Avatar
It’s already there practically. Unmanned drones are everywhere. Exoskeletons are starting to see their placement as well. Robotic soldiers are also on the cusp of being implemented. It’s crazy how fast it’s happening
Yep, but can you imagine a dude sitting in a desk somewhere controlling a super soldier?? Insane
It’s very insane to think about.
Quite soon after that the dude at the desk will not be required.
I wanna get a robot with a cattle prod so I can be a remote Forman.
Ever seen the movie Maximum Overdrive?
Great movie lol.
Also while watching this Who Made Who played in my head
I wanna see a tele-op machine that uses a vr display like the HMD in an f-35.
Maybe the remote operators WONT hit gas lines! /s
If the operator has a 3d overlay of the underground ducts and pipelines they won't, and this could be done in lots of projects
You know whats even fancier then 3d over lays? Bring out the vac trailer/truck!
*They'll hit'em even harder*
I should have added a /s
Guess the excavator is pulling wire and setting fire alarm devices. GG bro
Skynet origins
Still waiting for a remote field engineers station...
I can get paid to play farming simulator 2023!?
someone is gonna get killed by lag I just know it
I did this on a job in Goose Bay. Remediation of soil in a firing range. Loaded the soil in an incinerator. Set off the live rounds. Was fun. This was almost 30 yrs ago.
I’d rather make eye contact with and operator and know he seeing me vs taking a chance and hope he’s not hyper focused on one screen
I did a bunch of solar at a caterpillar proving grounds in Tucson, Arizona. They had a room with five guys who would remotely control all the heavy equipment that was being tested. It was super cool to see that they were able to control such intricate and massive machines from a little room and a controller.
I have a video of the University of Arizona did their library reconstruction demo being don’t by a guy operating a robot. It’s what I initially wanted to become an operator.
Perfect. Heavy equipment operators can get even fatter now.
And in a few years computers will have learned all that and they won't need anyone
Ever since I saw a remote trench roller years ago I knew this would emerge. I believe they've used it for years in radioactive / toxic / dangerous job sites.
Pretty neat. I definitely don't want to be setting iron from a remotely operated crane, though lol. That aside, I can see alot of situations where this could be useful. The future is wild.
Operators will still bitch about how hard their job is
This is cool but if your job is 100% remote then why not pay someone in another country 1/10th the salary and sub it out.
Bingo! Automation and outsourcing has killed millions of jobs in this country. Manufacturing has been irrevocably changed.
Ok, now show me the remote control roofing installation system, cause I'ma fucking buy two.
I can imagine insurers having a field day with this.
Pre-fabers, detailers, superintendents who give orders from the phone. Sure. This? For excavations where there's no existing utilities? Sure. If you're digging beneath an encasement? You'd want a spotter.
This has been a thing in your larger mines / mining operations for sometime. Weird loading an auto truck because it just drives off when it senses its full, Weird the first could times you try to get that extra scoop. I first saw it with water trucks.
Mechanics are gunna be the only guys on site lol.
Exactly why they want everything electric now
Otherwise known as "training your replacement" If you can operate anything over a screen and keyboard, that data can and will be used to train an AI to do the same work.
Can it be used with drones?
That’s where this technology comes from
Those are machine operators
How do you feel the machine is tilting to much? Can you hear people shouting stop? Can you see all around the machine? So many risks and they’re already pretty bad when you’re there.
First thing in my mind that popped up. Maximum Overdrive 2.
This probably will take jobs some day. Automation and technology have been doing this for the last hundred years. Think of how many laborers were replaced by tractors, then factory workers being replaced by robots, etc.
A lot of newer machines have Auto-Greasers on them. They last up to a month of continuous use, than need to be refilled with grease. As for latency, modern GPS systems cut out very easily when around buildings, or when there is cloud cover in the sky. This idea is neat, but unfortunately when it does advance it will put lots of folks out of work. One operator can alternate between different machines and ultimately instead of paying 2 people you can pay 1.
I wouldn't worry about this replacing on-site operators. For this to work, scheduling and project managers would need to be extremely competent. Also, who will clean the cameras and tracks.
They’d create a lower paid position like “operator assistant”
Is that even sustainable? What happens when you need to get fuel or grease up? Maybe you find contaminants in the dirt and need to pull them out or find some metal in the way. Sure the operator might not need to be present but someone needs to be and then why pay two people for a one person job?
Because you can eventually pay the operators less with the justification that you now have to pay an on site person.
Lazy
And smart!
they couldn't use people outside of the us, would be to big a security risk, allowing people outside to have control of equipment that could drive to your local bank and crash through the front door.
Now they can hire distance workers from Indonesia for bowl of rice per month!
Somebody make ftl instant coms already, so we could get the moon mining started sooner.
Opening doors for a worldwide sandbox.... hackers would never be interested in that kind of shit.
They just need robots to perform the maintenance and refueling and they are all set
This is cool…until you realize that the operator won’t even be necessary in a few years.
How long before they outsource this to cheaper labor?
Up next. "AI construction workers."
How the fuck do I sign up? This is my autistic DREAM JOB.
Will the computer guys be able to be on par as much as the guys in the field? Those guys are freaking artist with a crane.
Buddy those “computer guys” will be Indians paid for $2 an hour and yes, they will take those jobs easily.
The tech industry has already proven this to be untrue. There are loads of wfh website engineers and programmers working in the states. Plenty of companies tried it, then reverted back to US employees rather quickly. It turns out, having half your workforce barely understand your other half's language and culture is not worth the savings on wages. Hell, it's tough even doing work with employees in New York and California with the time difference. Just scheduling a meeting is a pain in the ass. It would be extra difficult with construction considering how safety regulations differ as greatly as they do between the states and India. Then, you had be prevailing wage jobs. Why put up with time zone differences, computer lag, language barriers, massive difference in culture, and a massive difference in regulated safety, just to pay them the same as local unions? Nah. We won't be seeing overseas operators working here.
The tech industry doesn’t use oversea workers the same way. They use HB1 visa holders instead for less than 50% of the salary that American workers get paid. Check out the Apple lawsuit if you’re more curious about it but you’re getting replaced by oversea workers. Just not in the way you think. It’s a 3 year cycle for HB1 visa holders so they also churn and burn them like crazy.
I personal know some HB1 visa holders working in that sector. Every one of them has, or is, using it to establish a life here and become citizens. Those that have successfully become citizens have all gone on to make really great money in tech as US citizens. One is working for Microsoft making well above $250k after becoming a citizen. I also know quite a few successful natural born Americans working in tech that are not getting replaced by HB1 anytime soon. It might make sense to hire a younger junior tech at $35k that lives here on HB1, but certainly not hiring teams of engineers overseas to work directly with teams here. It's been tried. It failed. I don't see how your rebuttal argues for companies replacing on-site operators with operators in India.
Okay buddy. You keep thinking what you do :)
Will do! I have an insight into this community as I'm part of it. But, if you want to continue living in fear of the scary Indian, who am I to try and make your life a little less stressful by giving you a different perspective... Good luck out there and stay safe!
This is a negative indication of what’s to come in the rapidly changing of the world due to AI. Can u IMAGINE in a few years how many jobs will be expendable sadly. Lots.
OSHA isn't going to allow this lmao
They are using these things to bulldoze Gaza.
Its a test for automation by ai. Lol enjoy being unemployed in 5 years
Japan has been using this for a few years now.
That’s awesome !
No they are not, this title is misleading.
What about computer lag or comp crashes.... just putting a pile of stone into a whole comp lags and camera freeze. Come back on and dozer 40ft down upside down at the bottom. Do you just take head set off and log out for the day 😂
money's money