Wallpaper 10

SYNOPSIS

Rapidly increasing demands to

enhance speed and safety for on-site

and site-specific construction drive

the need to develop collaborative

and autonomous systems. These

projects generally involve the use

of retro-fitted gantry and robot arm

s y s t e m s, w h i c h h a v e s i z e c o n s t r a i n t s

and are computationally complex

to use in collaboration with other

machines. This platform presents

an alternative, multi-robot system

built from the ground up to enable

collaborative and site-specific

construction. The strategy

simplifies design workflows while

simultaneously maintaining

structural, aesthetic, and robot

d y n a m i c c o n s t r a i n t s. T h i s s y s t e m o f

swarm fabricators allows robotic

a g e n t s t o o p e r a t e i n p a r a l l e l ,

fabricating independent composite

tubular forms. Each robot controls

its position, allowing the system to

effectively grow a large-scale woven

architecture. The robots fabricate

by pulling fibre and resin from

ground-based storage and winding a

composite around their own bodies.

A d d i t i o n a l s e c t i o n s o f a c o m p o s i t e

t u b e a r e a p p e n d e d u p o n e a c h o t h e r,

starting from a base. The system

relies on an environmentally

templated, flocking-based strategy

to both design the structure and

control the robot’s trajectories.

DESCRIPTION

In traditional manufacturing

processes, either subtractive or

additive, there is a discrepancy

between what can be designed

and what can be fabricated and

produced. CAD software tends to

be agnostic to the fabrication

process, which leads to lengthy and

complicated design iterations

and requires close communication

between design and build teams

to resolve the differences that

arise from constraints in either

d e s i g n r e q u i r e m e n t s o r f a b r i c a t i o n

limitations, ranging from

materials and geometries to loads

and aesthetics. This has led to

an emergence of software tools

that can decompose high-level

design specifications to fabricable

instructions. However, these

p r o b l e m s e s c a l a t e f u r t h e r i n m u l t i-

robot fabrication systems, in which

the original differences remain,

and each additional robot compounds

the complexity. Previous groups

working in multi-robot fabrication

and multi-agent generative design

h a v e t e n d e d t o l e a v e t h i s q u e s t i o n

unanswered and focus primarily

o n d e v e l o p i n g t h e h a r d w a r e s y s t e m

or design software separately.

W e h o p e t o c l o s e t h e l o o p w i t h i n t h e

design workflow for a multi-robot

system, such that the designer and

fabrication platform work together to

determine final forms more effectively.

To d o t h i s, w e d e v e l o p e d , b u i l t a n d

experimentally verified a complete

workflow, co-designing hardware

and algorithms simultaneously from

the ground up, allowing an end

user to take advantage of the entire

parallelised system. We developed

a flocking-based approach towards

s t r u c t u r a l d e s i g n t h a t e n a b l e s

users to incorporate both design

and fabrication constraints at

once. Digital designs can then be

p h y s i c a l l y p r o d u c e d b y o u r s w a r m

fabrication platform with minimal

correction. Our swarm-based robotic

construction system relies on a

t e a m o f i d e n t i c a l r o b o t s t h a t

each fabricate independent, self-

supporting composite tubes.

The robots work together to interweave

their tubular structures into

a woven architecture. Each robot

pulls raw material – fibre and

resin – from ground-based storage

up through the centre of the tube it

is fabricating and winds a composite

segment to extend its tube. After

each segment is fabricated the robot

moves forward to position itself

t o w i n d a n o t h e r s e g m e n t. A t t h e

start of each segment the robots

control their orientation to

create controlled curvatures in

the tubes. The combined hardware

and software innovations allow

for designers to create sophisticated

and site-specific plans that can

b e p r o d u c e d o n - s i t e, q u i c k l y, and

efficiently by a robot swarm.

CREDITS

Research and design by The Mediated

Matter group at the MIT Media Lab.

Project team members include

Markus Kayser, Levi Cai, Christoph

B a d e r, S a r a F a l c o n e, N a s s i a

I n g l e s s i s, J o ã o C o s t a , a n d g r o u p

director Neri Oxman.

FIBERBOTS
2016–2018

Matter

Synthetic fibres

Media

Fibre-winding robotic swarm bots

Fiberbots, final structure.
16 Fiberbots create a forest of self-
supporting tube segment by segment.
It remains undamaged after several
months in various weathers

A b o v e, v a r i a t i o n o f fi b r e d e n s i t y

and distribution as informed

by structural load constraints.

Depending on the desired tube

thickness and wind pattern,

each segment takes about

8.5 minutes to wind and cure

Each Fiberbot comprises a winding
arm, a reversibly inflatable mandrel,
and subsystems for navigation
and control

∑ 325

Neri Oxman