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Posted by surprisetalk 2 days ago

Robots move Shanghai city block [video](www.youtube.com)
142 points | 52 comments
qwertox 16 hours ago|
Reminds me of the Rinsdorf-Talbrücke in Germany, which got finished last month.

In order to renovate/rebuild the bridge they first built a new half (full lanes) next to the old bridge, collapsed the old bridge, then built the other half where the external half of the old bridge used to be, and finally moved the previously newly built half to join that latter new half, so that the new bridge can take the place of the old one, all of this while parts of it could still be used for traffic.

It is the kind of "German Engineering" which people used to talk about, but sadly our government didn't feel that this was an opportunity to do some proper PR. The Chinese have become experts at this kind of PR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iseMMVEEojk&t=23s

dluan 1 day ago||
If anyone is ever in Shanghai and interested in seeing this, it's in a very cool area called Fengshengli, where you can see these old preserved style warehouse buildings. The area is filled with hip breweries, coffee shops, bike shops, art galleries, and clothing boutiques, and it's actually not that crowded or busy compared to other touristy spots. It's also nicer compared to Xintiandi imo, where it feels more produced and fake, like a reconstruction as opposed to actual heritage buildings.

Great snapshot of classic Shanghai architecture, blended with new, like this really cool coffee spot: https://www.archdaily.com/973430/birdie-cup-coffee-fog-archi...

entropie 1 day ago||
A few years ago they moved a (historic) train station where I lived. It needed to be moved for some underground tube construction, but also a few meters to make the new buildings fit. I witnessed, it was awesome.

https://www.e-architect.com/images/jpgs/leipzig/bayerischer_... / https://www.e-architect.com/leipzig/bayerischer-bahnhof-buil...

selimnairb 1 day ago||
This title is misleading. It makes it seem like the robots did this autonomously, when in reality hundreds if workers were involved. The “robots” were “smart jacks” I would say. Humans couldn’t have done this without hydraulic jacks, they used fancy hydraulic jacks.
ddtaylor 1 day ago||
I was not really lead to believe they did this autonomously. It seemed to me like either (a) they were doing the lockstep in a pre-programmed way that required timing of the equipment working together or (b) the same but with humans operating the timing. In either case I find the use of robots impressive.
mixdup 1 day ago|||
Calling these robots is like calling a wrench a robot
suspended_state 23 hours ago||
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stevenicr 8 hours ago|||
I was expecting to see a few hundred humanoid robots picking up things and moving them. Appreciate the comment here as it informed me and saved from the click and drain of youtube things.
nottorp 16 hours ago|||
Pretty sure it's been done in the past without "AI".

Earliest example on wikipedia seems to be from 1930:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Building_(Indianapolis)

More here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_relocation

linsomniac 15 hours ago||
The Indianapolis AT&T building is particularly interesting because it was a telephone exchange AND they did the move while keeping the exchange in operation. https://www.archdaily.com/973183/the-building-that-moved-how...
jayde2767 1 day ago|||
It is still a very impressive feat of engineering.
selimnairb 1 day ago||
Oh, absolutely.
MSFT_Edging 15 hours ago||
I think it's more the general advancement in the tech. We used to do this by jacking up onto large sets of wheeled trucks or along rails. The many independent "walking" hydraulic jacks walking in unison is the cool part.

We've been moving buildings for 100s of years, its cool to see the advances in it.

smusamashah 1 day ago||
I dont understand this. I always thought houses/buildings have underground supports on which the structure is erected. Doesn't have to be tall towers, all small buildings have underground support too.

How come these buildings don't have any of that? Or is the support in form of metal rods which these structures are freely screwed to?

toast0 1 day ago||
It looks like the building was constructed on a concrete slab foundation. The slab is poured in the ground, but not anchored into it. When it's time to move it, you dig under the slab to put in jacks to raise it off of the ground underneath the slab. These jacks also can move it a bit at a time.

For smaller buildings, you might jack it up, and put wheels under it to move it. For smaller buildings on perimeter foundation, you might unbolt it from the foundation to move it, and attach it to a newly poured foundation at the new location.

Repairing a sinking foundation is similar... Dig under, lift up as needed, fill in under the sinking areas, hopefully with something more stable.

Much taller buildings need deeper anchoring. Small buildings on sites with difficult soil conditions need deeper anchoring too.

lukaslalinsky 1 day ago|||
From the video, it seems like the houses were cut from the original foundation and a huge blocks of concrete was formed underneath the houses. Before pouring the concrete, they dug under the houses and inserted metal framework for the move, that was likely how they lifted the whole thing to insert the jacks later on. The process of doing this seems way more interesting to me than the final move with these synchronized jacks. I'd love more details about that
tartoran 1 day ago||
I wish that they showed that part too, the synchronized robo-jacks are interesting but the first part seems more challenging.
thenthenthen 18 hours ago||
I just walked passed, it seems they cut the foundation and somehow poured a new one underneath? Here are some pics: https://ibb.co/yttQQhJ https://ibb.co/KxbM6cnY
linsomniac 15 hours ago||
Search youtube for "crawl space underpinning" for some videos of a residential process.

I'm sure they're doing something more elaborate there, but in residential you do this underpinning technique if you want to replace or extend your foundation (in my case, putting a basement where there is a crawl space), where you mark the foundation into 2' segments and label them A, B, C. Then you go through and dig/cut out all the "A"s, and pour footings and foundations in place, then repeat for the Bs and Cs. I'm thinking about doing this for my crawl space just to have some more space for storage.

Avicebron 1 day ago|||
I found this because I had a similar question, I think it might be hard to gauge how much prep work was done from the video.

https://parametric-architecture.com/shanghai-relocates-7500-...

The houses: https://shanghaistreetstories.com/?page_id=1288

rendaw 1 day ago||
And how did they get the robotic legs under there in the first place? Once they're in place the walking is cool, but that seems like the less impressive part.
Animats 1 day ago||
That's a nice approach. Here's a similar move back in 2020, again from the SCMP.[1] This one turned a corner.

The robotic part is that all the lifters have load measurement, probably in at least 3 axes, and report stresses to the controller. Other ways of moving big structures require getting big rigid steel beams underneath to make the building strong enough to move. Like these US building moves.[2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gwu4ovaSiQY

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htdVWM42mRg

Stevvo 16 hours ago||
There's a great video of the Amish doing this by hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc6IT5L3ZSk
RainyDayTmrw 1 day ago||
This, and the few other famous photos and videos of similar operations, confuse me, because it violates my mental model of how buildings work. My mental model is that a modern building has a large, concrete foundation that extends significantly below the ground, and that the foundation is attached to the structural frame of the rest of the above-ground building. Then, how can jacks, whether manual or robotic, raise a building up off of its foundation?

Also, how can they scoot some, but not all, jacks over on any given step, and alternate? I understand that rigidity isn't fully binary, but I figured that buildings were on the more rigid side.

incompatible 1 day ago|
These aren't modern buildings, and they aren't skyscrapers that would need significant foundations. The details of the foundations would still be interesting. I suppose they got the process started by finding or clearing spaces underneath, inserting support beams, and jacking them up.
mensetmanusman 17 hours ago||
Changing the view of the Bellevue: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I52IwcC3a3c&pp=ygUaTW92aW5nIGJ...

I wonder if humanity in the future will make this a typical part of every house so that they can slowly move towards or away from water.

netsharc 15 hours ago|
Hah, people sometimes wonder "This isn't where I parked my car, and it's pointing in a different direction", imagine returning to a building and its pointing a different direction
CommenterPerson 13 hours ago|
This is a tremendous engineering, coordination and public works feat.

Using words like "robots" and "AI" shows how much hype has taken over the latter two fields, with actual achievements being modest in comparison to the hype.

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