A Conversation on Automation and Agency

Industrial robotics and the hardware and software of automation have been at the center of the discourse on computational design and digital fabrication for more than a decade. Initially developed for the execution of repetitive tasks in the context of serialized production and manufacturing, robots and industrial machines have been repurposed, reprogrammed, and rethought for an array of new tasks, as well as new approaches to what they can do and what they can represent. However, the meaning, histories, and array of metaphors surrounding robots inform design and creative practice. This keynote conversation brought together five designers, scholars, artists, and practitioners whose work engages with robotics and automation, specifically focusing on their implications in design and creative practice, and their complex cultural and political histories

Cooperative Robotic Assembly: Computational Design and Robotic Fabrication of Spatial Metal Structures

Robotic fabrication has expanded existing construction techniques, i.a. through enabling the assembly of bespoke structures made form discrete elements. This has substantially increased the design freedom, particularly through allowing designers to conceive and fabricate structures with complex geometries. However, this design freedom along with the intricacies of new fabrication methods has introduced new challenges regarding both digital design and materialisation. Robotic assembly, like other fabrication techniques, comes with its own constraints and limitations which are often difficult to intuitively describe. Similarly, bespoke geometries can result in complex geometric dependencies. This leads to a need for design methods that can control the resulting complexity and integrate it in the design process. The thesis is built around a cooperative robotic assembly method that utilises two robots to construct spatial structures made of steel bars. This expands existing assembly techniques by enabling the robots to change their role during the fabrication process while at the same time supporting each other. As a result, bespoke structures with complex geometries are built without the need of supporting or guiding structures. The proposed structures are based on a novel construction system that allows for a high level of differentiation. This is achieved particularly through a connection typology that allows to accommodate bars connecting at individual angles to each other. Furthermore, it presents a computational design strategy for geometrically, structurally and fabrication informed designs that is based on the assembly sequence and allows for a reciprocal information flow between design and fabrication. The goal of the thesis is to provide a set-up for designing and constructing spatial structures by connecting design and fabrication in one interlinked process. This is achieved through a combination of physical prototyping and digital design generation, by simultaneously developing the three main topics of the research: Constructive system, which includes geometric, structural and material systems, cooperative robotic assembly and computational design. Following hypothesis lays at the base of the thesis: Developing computational tools for simultaneously controlling the complexity of design, fabrication and structure leads to the mitigation of the limitations of prevailing spatial structures. This, in turn, allows architects and designers not only to fabricate complex designs but to envision new typologies of structures by gaining control and fully exploiting the design space resulting from fabrication, structure and geometry. Ultimately this leads to an expansion of the architectural design language

Construction Robotics: From Automation to Collaboration

CRC

Beyond Optimization: Interaction as a Means to Resituate Digital Fabrication

In this case study, researcher and professor Stefana Parascho proposes that interactive and improvisational robotic fabrication can be a means to counteract what she perceives to be one of digital fabrication’s more detrimental fixations: optimization. In contrast to the top-down, optimization-centric approaches that have long dominated architecture-oriented digital fabrication, Parascho advocates for bottom-up, open-ended fabrication processes that can dissolve the traditional roles of humans and machines. Parascho believes that such a reconfiguration of human-machine relationships will help to create more flexible kinds of digital fabrication that can help researchers continue to expand and innovate the field.CRC

Concrete rubble as a new construction material: Panorama of applications to known structural typologies

Concrete rubble is among the most wasted materials worldwide. In this paper, we present a panorama of the upcycling potential of disused concrete rubble as construction material for new low-carbon structures. We identify 15 existing structural applications of concrete rubble reuse, 6 of which are currently supported with full-scale built demonstrators. Through analysis of 10 site visits and 19 interviews, we identify 7 opportunities (e.g., related to cheapness, sustainability, and localness) and 9 limitations (e.g., related to disparity and uncertainty) linked to this untapped material, and we compare them to those of stone and newly-produced concrete. Possible processing and assembly strategies specific to concrete rubble pieces are also documented. An analysis of the applicability of concrete rubble to 19 structural typologies highlights solutions that are technically possible, structurally relevant, and sustainably convenient. The analysis coupled with the review of full-scale precedents highlight the diversity and extent of remaining solutions to be explored. Wall and vault applications are detailed through structural design explorations encompassing 185 processing strategies and functional requirements. The authors identify foundations and retaining walls as environmentally convenient applications, surface-active compression structures as structurally relevant applications; and highlight readily implementable solutions, such as gabions walls.SXLCRC

Improv-Structure: Exploring Improvisation in Collective Human-Robot Construction

CRC

Cooperative Robotic Fabrication for a Circular Economy

In a cooperative robotic fabrication (CRF) framework, multiple industrial robots are specifically sequenced to work together, thus allowing them to execute coordinated processes with greater geometric and structural variation. In the context of the construction industry, agents in a cooperative setup can perform complementary functions such as placing or removing building components while simultaneously providing temporary support to a structure. This approach can reduce, or completely remove, the need for temporary external supports and scaffolding that would typically be required for stability during the construction of geometrically complex spanning spatial structures. For a circular economy, this means overall reductions to primary resource inputs and improvements to the disassembly, reuse, and reassembly potential of a structure at the end of its life. This chapter gives a summary of three projects that successfully demonstrate the use of cooperative robotic fabrication to promote several principles of a circular economy through different scaffold-free construction applications. The topics covered in this chapter will be of interest to researchers and professionals interested in the emergent intersection of digital fabrication, robotics, and sustainability applied to the building industry

From concrete waste to walls An investigation of reclamation and digital technologies for new load-bearing structures

Our research explores opportunities in using unaltered concrete rubbles from demolition for the digital construction of structural walls. Through research by iterative making, we identify relevant upcycling processes and design strategies and explore new tectonics specific to reclaimed concrete rubbles with non- standard variable geometries. This iterative research proposes accessible and scalable digitalprocessestoovercomethechallenges inherent to this untapped construction material. A full-scale prototypes was built as a first step in developping such constructive logic.SXLCRC

From concrete waste to walls: An investigation of reclamation and digital technologies for new load-bearing structures

The research presented in this paper highlights current practices for the end-of-life of concrete and explores opportunities in using unaltered concrete rubbles from demolition for the digital construction of structural walls. Through research by iterative making performed by the authors, relevant upcycling processes and design strategies are identified and explored to shape new tectonics specific to reclaimed concrete rubbles with non-standard variable geometries. This iterative research proposes accessible and scalable digital processes to overcome the challenges inherent to this untapped construction material. Results from small-scale prototypes provide valuable insights for full-scale processes to advance the digitization of construction and alleviate its environmental impact.SXLCRC