Yes. I also sorta daydream about similar things. With real estate we’ve got this archaic model mired in all these artificial rules and barriers and intermediaries who are legally allowed to consume a chunk from every transaction.
A proper setup would be, well, once we get robotics to be more flexible and reliable (obviously using the latest breakthroughs in reinforcement learning/neural networks), we’d make everything out of cubical modules like you say.
So you assign the robots to clear a site and the first ones come and demolish anything in the way. Then the next set come and install a concrete foundation and the appropriate base supports. Then the next set install an open framework of girders with however many floors the building will be allowed to have. The framework is made from modules that bolt together in pre-manufactured sections, with obviously a utility/elevator core going up the middle that is prewired and pre plumbed.
Then the buildings functional modules are cubes of a standard size—probably using the ‘fold flat’ technology several startups are working on that makes them transportable in standard dimension trucks—and they come from a factory prefabricated and pre-furnished and designed for the purpose of their occupants. Obviously, the smart, flexible robotics in the factory can build a cube with an interior layout with tens of thousands of permutations, as the materials they need are just in time ordered from other feeder factories by robotic vehicle.
Once on site, most of these buildings have an outer set of rails and a winch system that lets the cube be autonomously raised and then moved laterally to it’s final position while the building is in use.
The cubes are inherently designed to be maintainable by other robotics—all the functional systems inside them are subdivided into modules that can be removed all in one piece, so that maintenance robots don’t have to be very smart, they just go pull the module that self reports a failure or it’s peer modules claim is not responding. (and they come back and replace peer modules and reporter modules if this doesn’t clear the fault)
And yeah obviously as the interior of a cube gets dated, or no longer to the occupant’s needs it gets removed, recycled in a factory, and a new one built. Since robots do 99.9% of the work, costs are cheap and recycling and building a new one (often with used parts from previously recycled modules) is cheap.
Yes. I also sorta daydream about similar things. With real estate we’ve got this archaic model mired in all these artificial rules and barriers and intermediaries who are legally allowed to consume a chunk from every transaction.
A proper setup would be, well, once we get robotics to be more flexible and reliable (obviously using the latest breakthroughs in reinforcement learning/neural networks), we’d make everything out of cubical modules like you say.
So you assign the robots to clear a site and the first ones come and demolish anything in the way. Then the next set come and install a concrete foundation and the appropriate base supports. Then the next set install an open framework of girders with however many floors the building will be allowed to have. The framework is made from modules that bolt together in pre-manufactured sections, with obviously a utility/elevator core going up the middle that is prewired and pre plumbed.
Then the buildings functional modules are cubes of a standard size—probably using the ‘fold flat’ technology several startups are working on that makes them transportable in standard dimension trucks—and they come from a factory prefabricated and pre-furnished and designed for the purpose of their occupants. Obviously, the smart, flexible robotics in the factory can build a cube with an interior layout with tens of thousands of permutations, as the materials they need are just in time ordered from other feeder factories by robotic vehicle.
Once on site, most of these buildings have an outer set of rails and a winch system that lets the cube be autonomously raised and then moved laterally to it’s final position while the building is in use.
The cubes are inherently designed to be maintainable by other robotics—all the functional systems inside them are subdivided into modules that can be removed all in one piece, so that maintenance robots don’t have to be very smart, they just go pull the module that self reports a failure or it’s peer modules claim is not responding. (and they come back and replace peer modules and reporter modules if this doesn’t clear the fault)
And yeah obviously as the interior of a cube gets dated, or no longer to the occupant’s needs it gets removed, recycled in a factory, and a new one built. Since robots do 99.9% of the work, costs are cheap and recycling and building a new one (often with used parts from previously recycled modules) is cheap.