LEVERAGING THE BUILDING MATERIAL AS PART OF THE ROBOTIC KINEMATIC SYSTEM FOR PARALLEL CONSTRUCTION
Current applications of robotics in the construction industry focus primarily on the automation of conventional and, at best, slightly modified construction processes. In contrast to this automation approach, this project explores methods for Co-Design and development of a complementary robotic and architectural system, where the manipulator and the building material are co-designed. A system will be developed that combines actuator hardware and building material into a modular robot-material kinematic chain that can be reconfigured throughout the construction process. Deploying a fleet of such modules has the potential not only to extend existing automation in construction practices, but also to further increase the flexibility of on-site construction robots. In order to realise this vision, the research will address several related challenges arising from this novel approach, which inherently requires Co-Design strategies for robot hardware design, building system design, robot control system design, and the computational design software tool.
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATORS
Prof. Dr. Metin Sitti
Physical Intelligence Department (MPI-IS, PI), Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems
Prof. Achim Menges
Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD), University of Stuttgart
Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Marc Toussaint
Machine Learning and Robotics Lab (IPVS-MLR), University of Stuttgart
TEAM
Dr.-Ing. Salih Özgür Ögüz (IPVS-MLR)
Dr.-Ing. Tobias Schwinn (ICD)
Hyun Gyu Kim (MPI-IS, PI)
Samuel Leder (ICD)
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
2024
- Leder, S., Kim, H., Sitti, M., & Menges, A. (2024). Enhanced co-design and evaluation of a collective robotic construction system for the assembly of large-scale in-plane timber structures. Automation in Construction, 162, 105390. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2024.105390
- Leder, S., & Menges, A. (2024). Merging architectural design and robotic planning using interactive agent-based modelling for collective robotic construction. Journal of Computational Design and Engineering, 11(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcde/qwae028
- Zhang, P., Sevim, S., Leder, S., Maierhofer, M., Schwinn, T., & Menges, A. (2024). Multi-Robotic Maypole Braiding. In O. Kontovourkis, M. C. Phocas, & G. Wurzer (Eds.), Data-Driven Intelligence - Proceedings of the 42nd Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe 2024) (Vol. 1, pp. 137–146). eCAADe.
2023
- Leder, S., & Menges, A. (2023). Introducing Agent-Based Modeling Methods for Designing Architectural Structures with Multiple Mobile Robotic Systems. In C. Gengnagel, O. Baverel, G. Betti, M. Popescu, M. R. Thomsen, & J. Wurm (Eds.), Towards Radical Regeneration (pp. 71--83). Springer International Publishing.
- Leder, S., & Menges, A. (2023). Architectural design in collective robotic construction. Automation in Construction, 156, 105082. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2023.105082
2022
- Leder, S., Kim, H., Oguz, O. S., Kalousdian, N. K., Hartmann, V. N., Menges, A., Toussaint, M., & Sitti, M. (2022). Leveraging Building Material as Part of the In-Plane Robotic Kinematic System for Collective Construction. Advanced Science, 2201524. https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202201524
- Menges, A., & Wortmann, T. (2022). Synthesising Artificial Intelligence and Physical Performance. Architectural Design, 92(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.2819
2021
- Schubert, I., Driess, D., Oguz, O. S., & Toussaint, M. (2021). Learning to Execute: Efficient Learning of Universal Plan-Conditioned Policies in Robotics. NeurIPS 2021 - Neural Information Processing Systems 34.
- Toussaint, M., Ha, J.-S., & Oguz, O. S. (2021). Co-Optimizing Robot, Environment, and Tool Design via Joint Manipulation Planning. 2021 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA), 6600–6606. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRA48506.2021.9561256
- Łochnicki, G., Kubail Kalousdian, N., Leder, S., Maierhofer, M., Wood, D., & Menges, A. (2021). Co-Designing Material-Robot Construction Behaviors: Teaching distributed robotic systems to leverage active bending for light-touch assembly of bamboo bundle structures. In B. Farahi, B. Bogosian, J. Scott, J. L. García del Castillo y López, K. Dörfler, J. A. Grant, S. Parascho, & V. A. A. Noel (Eds.), Realignments: Toward Critical Computation - ACADIA 2021.
2020
- Hartmann, V. N., Oguz, O. S., Driess, D., Toussaint, M., & Menges, A. (2020). Robust Task and Motion Planning for Long-Horizon Architectural Construction Planning. Proc. of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).
- Leder, S., Kim, H., Oguz, O. S., Hartmann, V., Toussaint, M., Menges, A., & Sitti, M. (2020). Co-Design in Architecture: A Modular Material-Robot Kinematic Construction System. 2020 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) Proceedings of Workshop on Construction and Architecture Robotics.
- Leder, S., Weber, R., Vasey, L., Yablonina, M., & Menges, A. (2020). Voxelcrete: Distributed Voxelized Adaptive Formwork. ECAADe Online 2020 – Architecture and Fabrication in the Cognitive Age Proceedings of the 38th ECAADe Conference 2020. https://papers.cumincad.org/data/works/att/caadria2022_435.pdf
- Melenbrink, N., Werfel, J., & Menges, A. (2020). On-site autonomous construction robots: Towards unsupervised building. Automation in Construction, 119, 103312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2020.103312
- Nguyen, S. T., Oguz, O. S., Hartmann, V. N., & Toussaint, M. (2020). Self-Supervised Learning of Scene-Graph Representations for Robotic Sequential Manipulation Planning. Proc. of the Annual Conf. on Robot Learning (CORL).
2019
- Leder, S., Weber, R., Bucklin, O., Wood, D., & Menges, A. (2019). Design and prototyping of a single axis, building material integrated, distributed robotic assembly system. 2019 IEEE: 4th International Workshops on Foundations and Applications of Self* Systems (FAS*), 3rd International Workshop on Self-Organised Construction (SOCO).
- Leder, S., Weber, R., Wood, D., Bucklin, O., & Menges, A. (2019). Distributed Robotic Timber Construction: Designing of in-situ timber construction system with robot-material collaboration. ACADIA – Ubiquity and Autonomy Proceedings of the ACADIA Conference 2019.
- Yablonina, M., & Menges, A. (2019). Distributed Fabrication: Cooperative Making with Larger Groups of Smaller Machines. Architectural Design, 89(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.2413
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
2024
- Leder, S., Kragl, P., & Menges, A. (2024). Roaming Autonomous Distributed robot (RADr). DaRUS. https://doi.org/10.18419/darus-4059
- Leder, S., Siriwardena, L., & Menges, A. (2024). ABxM.DistributedRobotics.RADr: Agent-based Design and Control of multiple Roaming Autonomous Distributed robots (RADr). DaRUS. https://doi.org/10.18419/darus-4058
2023
- Hartmann, V. N., Ortiz-Haro, J., & Toussaint, M. (2023). Efficient Path Planning In Manipulation Planning Problems by Actively Reusing Validation Effort. Proc. of the Int. Conf. on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2303.00637
2022
- Nguyen, L., Schwinn, T., Groenewolt, A., Maierhofer, M., Zorn, M. B., Stieler, D., Siriwardena, L., Kannenberg, F., & Menges, A. (2022). ABxM.Core: The Core Libraries of the ABxM Framework. https://doi.org/10.18419/darus-2994
DATA SETS
2024
- Leder, S., Kragl, P., & Menges, A. (2024). Roaming Autonomous Distributed robot (RADr). DaRUS. https://doi.org/10.18419/darus-4059
- Leder, S., Siriwardena, L., & Menges, A. (2024). ABxM.DistributedRobotics.RADr: Agent-based Design and Control of multiple Roaming Autonomous Distributed robots (RADr). DaRUS. https://doi.org/10.18419/darus-4058
2022
- Nguyen, L., Schwinn, T., Groenewolt, A., Maierhofer, M., Zorn, M. B., Stieler, D., Siriwardena, L., Kannenberg, F., & Menges, A. (2022). ABxM.Core: The Core Libraries of the ABxM Framework. https://doi.org/10.18419/darus-2994