Automation in architecture : onsite making
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Abstract
Technological progress was seen as a mean to redesign the society by the famous architect, system theorist and inventor, Richard Buckminster Fuller. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an instrument of technological advancement. Architecture is experiencing the use of AI in construction. Architectural design and craftsmanship is relying heavily on tacit forms of knowledge (i.e. skills, experience) and use of technology. The erection of built architecture can be seen as a system of distributed knowledge, where the transfer of knowledge from the architect towards the craftspeople is crucial for the successful implementation of an architectural concept into physical space. With the emergance of AI, this paper will address the aspects of automation in making - that is being used in architecture.
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Methodology
This paper explores the article, " Changing Building Sites: Industrialization and Automation of the Building Process " by Bock and Langenberg, [2014] to show how robot is being used in construction sites. Several examples of onsite automation will show how it is helping the practice of architecture by providing fine precision in making in construction site in real life application. Then it will arise the questions if this is another form of industrialization. In the light of Gordon Childe’s book “The Story of Tools”, it will try to find out its relationship with craftsmanship. At the end it will focus on general discussion about automation in making.
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Digital fabrication in design and construction
Parametric design tools such as Grasshopper, and environmental simulation tools like Envimet are now being used to simulate the structure and microclimate in a virtual ersatz setup. These simulations can imitate the properties of a built form and predict built environment’s performance with near-accurate precision before they are being made. Digital fabrication in architecture often indulge in a strange kind of Ruskinianism. Designers tend to occupy the place formerly devoted to craftsmen; the mantle of inspired artisans shaping the world with their hands – digitally augmented hands that is. They overlook both the persistent need for a human workforce to step into the gap left by robotic shortcomings and their potential otherness that forbids us from considering them as mere extensions of the designer’s hand.
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Gramazio & Kohler and Raffaello D’Andrea with ETH Zurich, Flight Assembled Architecture, FRAC Centre, Orléans, France, 2012
In the works of Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler at ETH Zurich, where they shared the chair of Architecture and Digital Fabrication, robots appear as a key element of future architectural development. Many schools of architecture are now equipped with robotic arms that are used for structural investigations as well as for research on surfacing and patterning. This approach presented a new paradigm in design and construction. Virtual reality (VR), which can be referred to as immersive multimedia or computer-simulated reality, replicates an environment that simulates our physical presence at places in the real or an imagined world, allowing the user to interact with the surroundings. Virtual realities focus on artificially creating sensory experience, which can include sight, touch, hearing, and smell. According to designer and visualizer Olivier Demange, every architect will soon design using 3D goggles. He also believes that virtual architecture will be as convincing as the real thing. Demangel predicts that architects and designers will be designing using VR tools within a few years and sending clients virtual models of their projects so they can walk through them wearing a 3D headset like Oculus Rift.
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Automation in building construction
The building industry started to adopt industrial production methods during the 1920s and 1930s in a push to solve the housing shortage in the growing towns after the First World War. Different construction techniques were thus required, and specially developed building machineries and cranes began to change the dynamics of building sites. The construction of the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition at London in 1851, for example, required a whole cohort of different machines, powered by a steam engine. Automation in housing construction started in Japan in the 1960s, with large prefabrication companies such as Sekisui House.
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Thomas Bock, ESPRIT 3 6450 ROCCO (RObotic Computer integrated COnstruction) masonry robot, Karlsruhe University, Germany, 1992–6, Development of a mobile heavy-duty robot for the construction sector, here applied to robotic on-site assembly.
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The initial focus was on simple systems that could execute a single, specific construction task in a repetitive manner. The conceptual and technological reorientation from single-task construction robots towards integrated automated construction sites was instigated in 1982 by the Waseda Construction Robot Group [WASCOR]. Following the pioneering experiments of Fabio Gramazio and Matthias Kohler at ETH Zurich, where they share the Chair of Architecture and Digital Fabrication, robots appear as a key element of future architectural development. Many schools of architecture are now equipped with robotic arms that are used for structural investigations as well as for research on surfacing and patterning. Alan Turing defined intelligent behaviors as the ability to achieve human-level performance in all cognitive tasks. To make a computer intelligent, it must possess similar or better prowess in natural language processing as a human.
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Left: 3d printer, right: milling machine
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The 3D printing machine, milling machine are now making adobe even in moon. The application of robotic equipment to the execution of construction tasks is gaining attention by researchers and practitioners around the world. A number of working prototype systems have been developed by construction companies or system manufacturers, and implemented on construction job sites. Several Japanese construction firms, for example, HyperCard (trademark) prototype of the construction robotic equipment management system (CREMS), developed as a response to the need to effectively manage diverse robots on future construction sites.
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Builder are being benefitted by the use of construction robots on site as they need to cut their costs, boost their productivity and make workplaces safer which radically reducing construction costs. The benefits of using automation onsite are as following:
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Increasing construction speed.
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Little to no building-site construction waste.
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Reducing financing costs for builders because the product is ready for market much quicker.
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Easier and safer work for construction workers.
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Lower insurance costs for builders.
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Increased sustainability over a building’s lifetime.
In 2015 a brick laying robot, SAM [semi-automated mason], was developed by Construction Robotics, a company based in Victor, New York. SAM is responsible for the tasks like picking up bricks, applying mortar, and placing them in their designated location. However a human handles the more nuanced activities, like setting up the worksite, laying bricks in tricky areas, such as corners, and handling aesthetic details, like cleaning up excess mortar. Scott Peters, cofounder of Construction Robotics, said, “The robot can correct for the differences between theoretical building specifications and what’s actually on site”. This robot is now being developed to serve the construction site with more efficiency and skill set.
Recently Australian engineer Marc Pivac developed a system for a brick laying robot, Hadrian, that can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and lay up to 1,000 bricks an hour. It is faster than SAM.
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Left: SAM, right: Hadrian
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Hadrian is able to take a pack of bricks, and handle, process and lay them without human intervention. A 3D computer aided design file ensures the machine cuts, routes and lays the bricks to a high level of accuracy using a 28 metre telescopic boom. The company will still need bricklayers, for now. In operation in Australia, Pivac says there will be a machine operator and a human on-site bricklayer for quality assurance. They expect the technology to eventually be licensed overseas.
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Automation and industrialization
The specialized robotic machinery and automated high-rise construction sites that were developed in Asia during the 1990s can be viewed in the context of a greater trajectory of mechanization and industrialization. In the course of time building systems and manufacturing technologies will be mutually adapting to each other. Which might affect the existence of the local craftsmen. Also it is associated with repetitive work with inhuman precision. Automation has the potential to minimize the time and thus can reduce the cost. Which too is a threat to local craftsmen. As Gordon Childe in his book “The Story of Tools” says, “The ultimate fruits of machines have been, however, to dispossess the craftsman of the tools of production and reduce him to wagery. For the costly new machines were not owned by the artisans whose work they performed, but by private individuals. Successful merchants became industrial capitalists by investing their profits in machines, as in Greece and Rome they had invested in slaves! As commodities produced by manual tools cannot compete on the market with the output of machines…” [1944].
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A robot, a hammer, a mere tool.
Robotic fabrication in architecture induces a change in efficiency as well as in the beauty that is linked to it. Since ancient time human came up with new tool. In course of time they advanced in technology and came up with better tools to serve their day to day life and to make life easier. A hammer in a craftsman’s hand became a robot in a programmer’s control. As a wheel is the extension of man’s feet, a robot is now an extension of his hands.
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Conclusion
Use of new tools opened up more advanced scopes to explore new process and formal expression. It can achieve high level of precision that is humanly impossible which also increases the safety in construction site. However to my understanding using automation, and other technologies should be used to get something novel out of it. My first argument is the way it is helping us to find novelty, the same way it causes lack of aura in crafts. On the other hand with the high efficiency and speed level of machine, the products can be replicated easily, with less time and money which might emphasize the negative effects of industrialization. Thirdly use of robots on construction site might cause people to lose their job. To summarize the whole discussion robot needs to be considered as a new tool. To use the full potential of the of this new tool, instead of merely trying to copy and perform long-established construction technologies or prevailing factory automation methods, consciousness is necessary to explore appropriate conditions, new design strategies, kinematics, programming and control for increasing their inherent performance potential.
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References:
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Bock, T. and Langenberg, S. (2014), Changing Building Sites: Industrialisation and Automation of the Building Process. Archit Design, 84: 88–99. doi: 10.1002/ad.1762
Picon, A. (2014), Robots and Architecture: Experiments, Fiction, Epistemology. Archit Design, 84: 54–59. doi: 10.1002/ad.1754
Asada, M.; Hosoda, K.; Kuniyoshi, Y.; Ishiguro, H.; Inui, T.; Yoshikawa, Y.; Ogino, M.; Yoshida, C. (2009). "Cognitive developmental robotics: a survey
Frohm, Jorgen (2008), Levels of Automation in Production Systems, Chalmers University of Technology, ISBN 978-91-7385-055-1.
Trevathan, Vernon L. (ed.) (2006), A Guide to the Automation Body of Knowledge (2nd ed.), Research Triangle Park, NC, USA: International Society of Automation, ISBN 978-1-55617-984-6.
Horst, Steven, (2005) "The Computational Theory of Mind" in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automation
http://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/article/robotics_automating_construction_and_building [September 29, 2014]
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http://news.discovery.com/tech/robotics/robotic-bricklayer-can-build-a-house-in-two-days-150630.htm
