From Concept to Construction - A Transferable Design and Robotic Fabrication Method for a Building-Scale Vault.

Abstract

The LightVault project demonstrates a novel robotic construction method for masonry vaults, developed in a joint effort between Princeton University and the global architecture and engineering firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM). Using two cooperating robotic arms, a full-scale vault (plan: 3.6 x 6.5m, height: 2.2m) made up of 338 glass bricks was built live at the "Anatomy of Structure: The Future of Art + Architecture" exhibition. A major component of the project was developing a fabrication method that could be easily adapted to different robotic setups since the research and prototyping, and final exhibition occurred at locations on different continents. This called for approaches that balanced the generic and the specific, allowing for quick and flexible construction staging and execution despite the variability associated with building in a new setup (i.e., varying robots, material, and scale). The paper is structured as follows. First, we introduce the notion of transferability in robotic construction and then elaborate on this concept through the four major challenges in the LightVault project development: 1) prototype scalability, 2) end-effector design, 3) path plan- ning and sequencing, and 4) fabrication tolerances. To develop and test solutions for these challenges, we iterated through several prototypes at multiple scales, with different mate- rials for the standardized bricks, and at three distinct locations: Embodied Computation Lab, Princeton, US; Global Robots Ltd., Bedford, UK; and Ambika P3 gallery, London, UK. While this paper is specifically tailored to the construction of masonry structures, our long-term goal is to enable more robotic fabrication projects that consider the topic of transferability as a means to develop more robust and broadly applicable techniques.