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According to the 2016 Mckinsey report, the global construction industry is one of the least productive (The Construction Productivity Imperative, McKinsey Report, 2016), which can be attributed to a minimal implementation of digital and automation technology (Berger Digtization in the Construction industry—Building Europe's road to "Construction 4.0 THINK/ACT—BEYOND MAINSTREAM, 2015). This research argues that this relates to the skill base of construction workers since very few, if any, can operate digital fabrication systems. Here, a digital model is considered foundational knowledge and is used to communicate with a fabrication unit. The difficulty lies in communicating the digital model to the fabrication machine, which arguably requires a level of specialist knowledge. However, history shows that other methods of communicating complex construction information have existed, such as 1:1 on-site drawing, which used to be made by architects or construction workers to communicate complex information related to constructing jigs or building components (The Tracing Floor of York Minster.” In Studies in the History of Civil Engineering, 1:81–86. The Engineering of Medieval Cathedrals. Routledge, 1997). We propose an alternative where we learn from history and amalgamate that knowledge with a robotic framework. We present the calibration process behind a parametric visual feedback method for robotic fabrication that detects on-object hand-drawn markings and allows us to assign digital information to detected markings. The technique is demonstrated through a 1:2 prototype that is fabricated using an ABB IRB 120 robot arm.

Human-robot interactions can offer alternatives and new pathways for construction industries, industrial growth and skilled labour, particularly in a context of industry 4.0. This research investigates the potential of collaborative robots (CoBots) for the construction industry and subject matter experts; by surveying industry requirements and assessments of CoBot acceptance; by investing processes and sequences of work protocols for standard architecture robots; and by exploring motion capture and tracking systems for a collaborative framework between human and robot co-workers. The research investigates CoBots as a labour and collaborative resource for construction processes that require precision, adaptability and variability. Thus, this paper reports on a joint industry, government and academic research investigation in an Australian construction context. In section 1, we introduce background data to architecture robotics in the context of construction industries and reports on three sections. Section 2 reports on current industry applications and survey results from industry and trade feedback for the adoption of robots specifically to task complexity, perceived safety, and risk awareness. Section 3, as a result of research conducted in Section 2, introduces a pilot study for carpentry task sequences with capture of computable actions. Section 4 provides a discussion of results and preliminary findings. Section 5 concludes with an outlook on how the capture of computable actions provide the foundation to future research for capturing motion and machine learning.

The global construction industry is one the least productive sectors over a 30-year period, which arguably could be related to virtually no implementation of digital and automation technologies within the construction industry. Construction processes arguably consist of expensive manual labor or manual operation of mechanized processes, where hand-drawn markings on work-objects or partly build structures are used to inform and steer the construction process or allows for ad hoc adjustments of elements. As such, the use of on-object, hand-drawn information is considered integral to the modus operandi of a plurality of construction trades, where timber construction and carpentry are of special interest. In contrast, emerging methods of digital production in timber construction implicitly or explicitly seek to eliminate the interpretive component to the construction work, imposing a top-down paradigm of file-to-factory execution. While such systems offer a performance increase compared to manual labor, it is notoriously sensitive to construction tolerances and requires a high level of specialism to be operated, which could alienate craft-educated workers. This research argues that developing methods for digital production compatible with on-site human interpretation and adaptation can help overcome these challenges. In addition, these methods offer the opportunity to increase the robustness and versatility of digital fabrication in the context of the construction site. The article reports on a new method titled “augmented drawn construction symbols” that through a visual communication system converts on-object hand-drawn markings to CAD drawings and sends them to a robotic system. The process is demonstrated on a full-scale prototypical robot setup.

Among current adoptions of standard industrial robotic arms for automation and mass customisation in the building industry, robotic fabrication is of interest for bespoke manufacturing and advancing mobile and onsite construction processes. The use of robotic arms can be of significance particularly where access and site conditions limit further construction of building elements to be inserted in an existing architectural fabric. This paper introduces research and development of robotic carbon-fibre winding of an integrated ceiling structure to support open and flexible workspaces scenarios. The project Systems Reef 1.0 explores the potential and viability for an integrated infrastructure that expands standard office-ceiling grid systems to support flexible workspace scenario and the agency of networked, dynamic and self-organising teams. To this extent, multiple soffit-hung, rotational and retractable data booms provide fibre-optic data, electrical cabling and integrated lighting. Through geometrically complex, fibre-reinforced building elements that are robotically manufactured onsite, a new distribution system for data and light can be provided to support individual and multi-group collaborations in a contemporary open-plan office for maximum flexibility. In this paper, we discuss research into the development of robotic carbon-fibre threading sequences and physical demonstrators for an integrated ceiling structure that takes into account local ceiling constraints. Using a KUKA KR10 industrial robot and mobile platform, carbon-fibre threading prototypes were integrated with onsite conditions and synthesised in four physical demonstrators that support data provision for flexible desking in open-plan office environment where prefabrication of large-sized building modules is restricted due to access constraints. The paper discusses challenges in integrating robotic carbon-fibre threading, data-driven occupancy, structural performance and results for workspace flexibility, and concludes with an outlook towards future potentials.

This research investigates the integrated design, robotic fabrication and materialisation of novel air-diffusion systems for contemporary office environments. Specifically, the research focuses on the integration of computational design, multi-objective optimisation and the development of novel approaches and techniques for large-scale 3D-printed module systems for low-embodied energy air ducts in the context of a pilot study for an open office environment. By investigating the interrelationship of polymer extrusion, material behaviour, computational design, computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation and multi-objective optimisation, the research leverages the capacities of each of these methods to create highly detailed geometries that are optimised for air diffusion to create locally differentiated thermal comfort. The paper contributes to and further extends existing research in the domain of large-scale 3D printing by presenting a series of developed novel approaches and techniques combining the diverse methods above to address the plural performance demands of low-embodied energy air-diffusion systems. It presents empirical research towards air simulation, geometry optimisation and bespoke fabrication for a high-quality, customised and resilient air-diffusion system to support the flexibility of contemporary office environments and reduce the adverse per capita environmental impact of cities through increased resource-use efficiency and substantial waste and embodied energy reduction.

This paper presents research into an ecosystem of human-robot collaborative manufacturing of timber modules that can respond to diverse environmental conditions through construction tolerances. It discusses the design and robotic workflow for two case studies with unskilled participants in an academic context, for the production of non-standard spatial and structural scaled prototypes that develop new systems for thinking and making architecture.

This paper describes the adaptation of the Exquisite Corpse to the design of a vault, cut using only ruled surfaces. The Surrealist process of the Exquisite Corpse, where a group of artists work collectively on a single drawing, without seeing the work of their collaborators, Salvador Dali called working in “semi-darkness”. This method succeeds however in producing complex combinations of forms that rarely emerge from solo designers. When a project arose for a vault in a remote environment, the Exquisite Corpse was chosen to generate complimentary and juxtaposing forms from which an architectural language could be later assembled. A model of the vault was fabricated using a robotic arm with a custom built nichrome wire foam cutting end effector from 107 billets of expanded polystyrene. The discussion notes the stereotomic challenges, the differences between the modelled outcome and its stone version, and reflects on maintaining “semi-darkness” during early stages of form design.

Coral|Colony discusses ongoing research that investigates a language shared between the fields of biology, mathematics, behavioural studies, interaction design, and architecture. It creatively deploys and explores such language by proceeding through series of speculative design research that rework natural paradigms. A collection of marine specimens (corals, shells) are here deployed as design models for a range of studies driven by computational media and design processes. Natural precedents thus become prototypes produced through digital fabrication; these are assembled in interactive and responsive set-ups, and performed and experienced as spatial installations. From a study of form and type in the natural precedents, the research expands this towards templates, codes, and systems for design applications that focus on processes and protocols of ongoing change. By exploring the way in which code becomes matter and coded matter parallels natural behaviour, this research project contributes to an interdis...

The book presents the proceedings of Rob/Arch 2016, the third international conference on robotic fabrication in architecture, art, and design. The work contains a wide range of contemporary topics, from methodologies for incorporating dynamic material feedback into existing fabrication processes, to novel interfaces for robotic programming, to new processes for large-scale automated construction. The latent argument behind this research is that the term ‘file-to-factory’ must not be a reductive celebration of expediency but instead a perpetual challenge to increase the quality of feedback between design, matter, and making.

In the context of acoustic performance in architecture, this paper presents research into the computational design and robotic fabrication of surfaces with micro-geometries that can change the acoustic response of space. It explores the design affordances for acoustically efficient patterns for sound scattering - between complex geometries, acoustical effects, and robotic fabrication. Spline curves pose a problem for the translation between geometry and material fabrication, specifically when a series of tests is required with a high degree of detail. Whereas 3D printed samples are impractically small, and CNC fabrication is limited by tool path axis, robotic fabrication enables precision for 1:10 scale model prototypes such as the quick sampling of sound discs that can be used to analyze acoustic scattering. Through a process of reverse engineering from parametric modeling to scale model production to physical simulation, the acoustic reflective properties of surface patterns are investigated for scattering coefficients, in order to derive statistical data on acoustic properties of these surfaces, and to deduce design rules.

This research reports on the robotic fabrication for the complex architectural geometries of three intersecting domes. The project explores systems for modules through a tessellated skin (a) of hexagonal tile modules that produce a macro geometry for a doubly curved, non-developable surface; and the smooth micro geometry of an interpolating structural rib (b) that requires a customised manufacturing of modules and their integrated joints (c). It outlines the computational workflow between geometrical conditions, structural requirements, toolpath development, and fabrication process. The research concludes with a discussion of a new module and joint hybrid informed by stereotomic and timber joint techniques, which takes advantage of the six axis robotic fabrication for a standardized multiple face joint between modules of varying sizes that enables a form and force fitting connection.

This paper examines the potential for creative practitioners to adopt robotic fabrication processes augmented with the introduction of sensors. Typically, the outcomes of a fabrication process are predetermined, however, with the introduction of sensors, design and fabrication process may be interrupted by real-time feedback. In such a system, design roles and authorship become secondary to the process of manipulating data, such that new rules of design can be introduced and developed in response to materials. Hardware and software such as Arduino, Grasshopper3D, Rhinoceros3D and Processing have opened up new strategies of hacking, coding and robotic manipulation that can be embedded in robotic fabrication processes. The addition of sensors provides feedback about material location and characteristics, work environment and co-workers, so as to support architectural dialogue. This paper proposes a framework for designing new protocols for human interaction and machine response in robotic fabrication systems.

Acoustic support of one’s own voice affects speech, and increased support can foster more relaxed voice projection, which reverses the Lombard effect. While hearing one’s own voice in typical rooms shows subtle influences of “global” room acoustics, local treatment can yield stronger effects for talking-listeners. This paper considers two types of architectural acoustic treatment for supporting one’s own voice and modifying speech propagation—high-back chairs and retroreflective ceilings. For a talking-listener, local acoustic treatment such as high-back chairs can be designed to selectively attenuate ambient noise while providing enhanced reception of sound from a particular direction, project speech towards a listener with increased gain for speech intelligibility, and also provide voice support. Acoustically retroreflective surfaces (e.g., ceilings and vertical partitions) provide increased voice support by reflecting a person’s voice back to them, without such local treatment. This also has the advant...

The proliferation of interactive technologies expands the palette of the architect, prompting a re-examination of notions of materiality in architecture. This article explores how the introduction of computational processes that accelerate, amplify or animate conventional mechanisms of time and space might alter the relationship between human perception and matter. We present a spatial paradigm for the materiality of interaction in architectural space and demonstrate it in a recent installation work, Trivet Fields, which employs a heterogeneous model of interactivity to articulate spatial materiality.

In search of an architectural response to shifting contemporary environments, the paper investigates the notion of latency in the related fields of sartorial fashion and architecture. The paper unfolds the possibility of a material and phenomenal elasticity that facilitates responsive architecture through a re-coding and re-contextualization of user, occupation and space.

The design of programmed spatio-material environments can be conceptualized as providing new stimuli with which to rewire the human brain in the context of architectural design. The plasticity of the brain is now recognised by neuroscience -- the brain can be teased to inform, continually learn and restructure itself. As a driver for stimuli that rewire behavioural and cognitive patterns, a cognitive architecture 4EA approach is employed ('embodied, embedded, enacted, extended, affected') to inform the design of digitally manufactured and interactive prototype environments that become sensate machines. We introduce a 4EA design framework, combining approaches from computational architectural design, human-computer interaction and choreography, for the design of environments in which novel cognitive experiences arise from interaction between network components. A series of creative works from the Black Project is presented as case studies exemplifying our 4EA design framework, furthering investigations into how to collaboratively design, manufacture and choreograph sensate machines for rewiring cognition through creative engagement by performers and audience alike.

The field of architecture is radically being transformed by the esthetic potential of embedded sensor technologies and interaction. This demo presents an approach to spatial design that implements techniques of interactive (immersive, spatial) art, to produce architectural 'spaces' that are expressed through the medium of interaction. 'Trivet Fields' is one example from a series of soundspace works that introduce interactive art computing to architectural practice, providing a new platform for cross-disciplinary explorations in esthetics of space.

Whereas the 'raw' experience of live sound events is often quite far removed from the 'cooked' auditory imagery that is presented when live acoustical events are amplified by a sound reinforcement system, there are many audio signal processing tools that can be applied in the attempt to simulate the more natural auditory characteristics of live ('unplugged') musical performances. This paper builds a discussion of perceptual results of modern acoustical treatment and sound reinforcement technology based upon notions from Levi-Strauss regarding what modern culture does to the 'raw' to make it 'cooked'. A key concept in evaluating the quality of a sound reinforcement system is that of the standard of reference against which the perceptual results can be compared. As there is no shared opinion nor well-established optimal acoustical character for a space upon which some consensus could be built, the question presents itself again and again. This paper will address related issues of reference, preference, and adequacy in sound reinforcement.