Harrison Branch-Shaw & Michael Longo We can only really experience sound in one dimension, through hearing their sound waves. In an artistic approach, this project attempts to visualize and map these sound waves by combining sound, light painting, and a robotic arm. Sound is made up of waves in the form of vibrations that travel through the air, invisible to the naked eye. Using long exposure and various lights and projections on the robot, we can produce new patterns and visuals that will compose a new and interesting media. Once we have our data we will be able to map and visually bring to life the sounds we hear. A tool composed of arduinos and led lights will be crafted to attach to the robot to aid in the light painting process. This shares some similarities to the projection project that we were shown in class, but the focus will be more on the long exposure to create new projections, designs, and pieces of artwork.

Shailaja Patel & Zhecui (Doris) Zhang RobArch is a research project for understanding the potentials of constructing large scale structures using an industrial robot. In doing so, the project considers a niche of designing a joinery system utilized in a deployable timber structure and creating a workflow for robot surrounding this joint.

Xin Chen & Yugyeong Lee Our project is intended to bring digital fabrication into traditional handcrafted designs. In many cases, robotic arm and digital fabrication is well known and widely used in parametric, repetitive and modular creations. Our project hopes to build on the existing precedent, create a more delicate and inspirational furniture piece composed by joineries. Incorporating robotic fabrication to recreate traditional craftship, our project proposes to make a table design in which its components are put together utilizing two types of joinery details: delicate dovetail joints and mortise and tenon joints. These robotically fabricated components are then proposed to be assembled by hand in collaboration with the robot as well. Ultimately, our project seeks to investigate industrial robots’ ability to perform a delicate, artistic exploration and implement a human + robot collaboration to produce an intricate furniture design.

Grace Ji & Denise Jiang Our project aims to create a casted modular piece that is a part of a larger assembly, using the molds created by robotic fabrication. The idea is to integrate robotic workflows with common construction methods such as casting. We are going to fabricate the mold made of foam using the hot wire cutter. The module has an organic shape achieved by joining two hot-wire cut molds. When attached, the modules create a wall with various depths and curvatures. As an experiment for potential mass customization, the workflow can be applied to quickly generate modular architectural parts that create large effects collectively.

Zuoming Chen, Aaron Lee A fabrication protocol which builds reusable site model for CMU SOA” Every semester dumpsters are filled with site models. Our group aims to create an fabrication protocal which can build site models with reusable bricks. The idea is simple. In Rhino, we first input a digital site model. Then using grasshopper plugin Meerkat GIS, the geographic information could be transcribed into the toolpath for the robot arm. The model is further pixelized into small bricks to create “minecraft” landscape for the pick and place workflow.

Sam Losi and Nick Coppula Architecture is defined by the duality and interplay of mass and void. Void, the airspace human’s interact in is viewed maily as a product of designed mass. Our proposal questions this longstanding cultural preconception. Enabled by information-era technologies, the designer is granted the ability to experiment with the void, and sculpt the resulting mass as a product of it. This project proposes a system which utilizes robotic weaving based on a real-world object. The woven pattern would be generated based on this object. This object would be placed in a regular framework to allow the weaving to work between a regular, predictable geometry and one which is irregular. The final form has a complex and spatial interior compared to a more regulated exterior. This is a major differentiation from many precedent projects which heavily rely on the formal language of “shell” for robotically woven structures. We are propsing a system of weaving which is adaptable and builds upon the existing formal language of robotically woven structures. Through this we aim to develop in inside-out appoach to weaving logic. One where the basic frame becomes external and the complexity becomes internal. This process will require the collaboration beteen two robots. One will move the material to position inside the frame and a second which will loop the material to a fastening system on the exterior. This collaboration is what will enable to internal complexity of weaving while maintining a regular external frame geoetry which will be expressed by repeatedly bringing numerous strands back to a set of fixed positions.

Robotically Formed Passive Thermal System Metal Facade Christine Kim & Min Young Jeong One of the most important goals of robotics in architecture is to allow the architects to have more efficient processes, which empowers the architects not only in the design process but also in the construction process. Robotics in Architecture utilizes efficiency and question ways to operate outside the normal and traditional design and construction processes. One aspect of using robotics in architecture is working with the robot arm. Since the robot arms have the flexibility of using a variety of different tools needed in the fabrication process as well as operate with six degrees of freedom in movement, there have been more researches and usage of robotic arms in these processes in architecture. With so many possibilities open with the robotic arm, the goal of this project is how the robotic arm can provide an efficient robotic workflow for faster and more effective prototyping rather than traditional casting and moulding. This research further explores this direction using incremental metal sheet forming combined with image sampling. Along with the research regarding thermal mass and passive strategies in architectural design principally by Dana Cupkova, the project further investigates effects of complex geometry for passive heat distribution in thermal mass systems. The robot arm will be programmed to create facade or wall panels based on image sampling, and include workflow of the usage of tools with various widths to increase the level of accuracy. The use of image sampling aids in deriving the complex geometry, which the design will be directly translated to the incremental metal sheet forming workflow. This research challenges how the design of facades or walls can respond to the environment and climate, as well as have performative functions. Our goal is to design the image to be used for image sampling and create metal panel facades with the information extracted from the image along with using incremental metal sheet forming.