VOA常速英语:Tech Startups Add Automation, Drones to Aid Construction Industry

Construction is one of the industries where skilled workers are always in demand.Here, a newcomer is joining this bricklaying crew in building a new school. It’s Sam, short for Semi-Automated Mason, developed by Construction Robotics, a New York-based company.Sam can lay about 3,000 bricks a day, several times more than a human mason.
建筑业是一个总对熟练工人需求不满的行业。这里来了一位新成员，加入砌砖队，共同建造新学校。它就是山姆（Sam），全称是半自动化泥瓦匠。这是由建筑机器人公司制造的，这家公司总部设在纽约。山姆每天可以放置大约3000块砖块，是泥瓦工人的数倍。

“The drive behind this was to look at some technology to be able to allow me to do more volume and keep my current customers happy by doing more of their work because right now I have to tell them “no” cuz we’re at capacity.”Former Google engineer Noah Ready-Campbell is founder of Built Robotics,a startup that’s developing technology for self-driving heavy construction vehicles.
“这背后是有技术支撑的，这种技术能让我们完成更多的工作，并且做更多现有的顾客的工作，让他们满意。但是现在我必须告诉他们不行了，因为我们已经满负荷工作了。”前谷歌的工程师诺亚·雷迪·坎贝尔（Noah Ready-Campbell）是机器人建设公司的创始人，这是一家创业公司，目前正在开发重大建筑工程自动驾驶车辆的技术。

“There’s a trillion dollars of roads, bridges you know, schools everything that needs to be built or, or maintained or upgraded and the, the biggest blocker for doing all of that is the cost.”“So if we can reduce the cost of excavation, grading, site prep, then we can actually accomplish more of the work that we need to do in this country.”
“你知道的，现在有价值万亿美元的道路、桥梁、学校或者其他什么都需要修建、养护或者改造，而做这些事的最大的障碍就是成本。”“所以，如果我们能够减少挖掘、分级、现场施工准备的成本，我们就能做更多我们国家需要做的事情。”

Drones are also part of this wave of automation.This drone can survey an entire 36 hectare-site in 25 minutes, a job that used to take a whole day with a truck mounted laser system. It’s developed by Kespry-a Silicon Valley company that converts the survey data into detailed 3D maps.“So the advantages in the survey market is not only is it safer and faster,but you get more data as much as ten to a hundred times more data with the fact that you’re autonomously flying a drone to collect all those survey points.”But automation would not necessarily put people at work.
无人机也是这场自动化浪潮中的一部分。这架无人机可以在25分钟内完成对36公顷的场地的勘探，在以前，这项工作需要用卡车式激光系统操作一整天。这个无人机是由凯思博瑞（Kespry）公司开发的，总部位于硅谷，这款无人机能够将调查数据转换为详细的3D地图。“因此，调查市场不仅是更加安全迅捷，而且能够得到的数据量将高达以前的数十倍乃至数百倍。您实际上可以亲自驾驶无人机以收集调查数据。”但是自动化不一定能让人们拥有工作。

“We need all of the robots we can get, plus all the workers working in order to have economic growth,but what that means is as machines start to do some of the work that people used to do. And the people have to migrate and transition to other forms of work, which will mean lots of retraining.”Automation is reshaping the construction industry, defining a new landscape where humans and robots work together.
“我们需要所有可以获得的机器人，我们也需要能带来经济效益的工人，但是当机器人能够做人们以前做的工作的时候，这意味着人们必须转而从事其他工作，这就意味着人们需要大量的再培训。”自动化正在重塑着建筑行业，也在定义着人类和机器人一起工作的新景观。

The writer Faiza Elmasry and Faith Lapidus, VOA News.
美国之音新闻，法萨·艾尔马瑟瑞（Faiza Elmasry）撰写，信仰·拉皮德斯报道。