Phil Ayres

Self-Organized Construction with Continuous Building Material: Higher Flexibility Based on Braided Structures

Self-organized construction with continuous, structured building material, as opposed to modular units, offers new challenges to the robot-based construction process and lends the opportunity for increased flexibility in constructed artifact properties, such as shape and deformation. As an example investigation, we look at continuous filaments organized into braided structures, within the context of bio-hybrids constructing architectural artifacts. We report the result of an early swarm robot experiment. The robots successfully constructed a braid in a self-organized process. The construction process can be extended by using different materials and by embedding sensors during the self-organized construction directly into the braided structure. In future work, we plan to apply dedicated braiding robot hardware and to construct sophisticated 3-d structures with local variability in patterns of filament interlacing.

Evolved Control of Natural Plants: Crossing the Reality Gap for User-Defined Steering of Growth and Motion

Mixing societies of natural and artificial systems can provide interesting and potentially fruitful research targets. Here we mix robotic setups and natural plants in order to steer the motion behavior of plants while growing. The robotic setup uses a camera to observe the plant and uses a pair of light sources to trigger phototropic response, steering the plant to user-defined targets. An evolutionary robotic approach is used to design a controller for the setup. Initially, preliminary experiments are performed with a simple predetermined controller and a growing bean plant. The plant behavior in response to the simple controller is captured by image processing, and a model of the plant tip dynamics is developed. The model is used in simulation to evolve a robot controller that steers the plant tip such that it follows a number of randomly generated target points. Finally, we test the simulation-evolved controller in the real setup controlling a natural bean plant. The results demonstrate a successful crossing of the reality gap in the setup. The success of the approach allows for future extensions to more complex tasks including control of the shape of plants and pattern formation in multiple plant setups.

Design Tools and Workflows for Braided Structures

This paper presents design workflows for the representation, analysis and fabrication of braided structures. The workflows employ a braid pattern and simulation method which extends the state-of-the-art in the following ways: by supporting the braid design of both pre-determined target shapes and exploratory, generative, or evolved designs; by incorporating material and fabrication constraints generalised for both hand and machine; by providing a greater degree of design agency and supporting real-time modification of braid topologies. The paper first introduces braid as a technique, stating the objectives and motivation for our exploration of braid within an architectural context and highlighting both the relevance of braid and current lack of suitable design modelling tools to support our approach. We briefly introduce the state-of-the-art in braid representation and present the characteristics and merits of our method, demonstrated though four example design and analysis workflows. The workflows frame specific aspects of enquiry for the ongoing research project flora robotica. These include modelling target geometries, automatically producing instructions for fabrication, conducting structural analysis, and supporting generative design. We then evaluate the performance and generalisability of the modelling against criteria of geometric similarity and simulation performance. To conclude the paper we discuss future developments of the work.

Autonomously shaping natural climbing plants: a bio-hybrid approach

Plant growth is a self-organized process incorporating distributed sensing, internal communication and morphology dynamics. We develop a distributed mechatronic system that autonomously interacts with natural climbing plants, steering their behaviours to grow user-defined shapes and patterns. Investigating this bio-hybrid system paves the way towards the development of living adaptive structures and grown building components. In this new application domain, challenges include sensing, actuation and the combination of engineering methods and natural plants in the experimental set-up. By triggering behavioural responses in the plants through light spectra stimuli, we use static mechatronic nodes to grow climbing plants in a user-defined pattern at a two-dimensional plane. The experiments show successful growth over periods up to eight weeks. Results of the stimuli-guided experiments are substantially different from the control experiments. Key limitations are the number of repetitions performed and the scale of the systems tested. Recommended future research would investigate the use of similar bio-hybrids to connect construction elements and grow shapes of larger size.

SCRIM – Sparse Concrete Reinforcement in Meshworks

This paper introduces a novel hybrid construction concept, namely Sparse Concrete Reinforcement In Meshworks (SCRIM), that intersects robot-based 3D Concrete Printing (3DCP) and textile reinforcement meshes to produce lightweight elements. In contrast to existing 3DCP approaches, which often stack material vertically, the SCRIM approach permits full exploitation of 6-axis robotic control by utilising supportive meshes to define 3D surfaces onto which concrete is selectively deposited at various orientation angles. Also, instead of fully encapsulating the textile in a cementitious matrix using formworks or spraying concrete, SCRIM relies on sparsely depositing concrete to achieve structural, tectonic and aesthetic design goals, minimising material use. The motivation behind this novel concept is to fully engage the 3D control capabilities of conventional robotics in concrete use, offering an enriched spatial potential extending beyond extruded geometries prevalent in 3DCP, and diversifying the existing spectrum of digital construction approaches. The SCRIM concept is demonstrated through a small-scale proof-of-concept and a larger-scale experiment, described in this paper. Based on the results, we draw a critical review on the limitations and potentials of the approach.

Multiscale modeling frameworks for architecture: Designing the unseen and invisible with phase change materials

Multiscale design and analysis models promise a robust, multimethod, multidisciplinary approach, but at present have limited application during the architectural design process. To explore the use of multiscale models in architecture, we develop a calibrated modeling and simulation platform for the design and analysis of a prototypical envelope made of phase change materials. The model is mechanistic in nature, incorporates material-scale and precinct scale-attributes, and supports the design of two- and three-dimensional phase change material geometries informed by heat transfer phenomena. Phase change material behavior, in solid and liquid states, dominates the visual and numerical evaluation of the multiscale model. Model calibration is demonstrated using real-time data gathered from the prototype. Model extensibility is demonstrated when it is used by designers to predict the behavior of alternate envelope options. Given the challenges of modeling phase change material behavior in this multiscale model, an additional multiple linear regression model is applied to data collected from the physical prototype in order to demonstrate an alternate method for predicting the melting and solidification of phase change materials.

Enlisting Clustering and Graph-Traversal Methods for Cutting Pattern and Net Topology Design in Pneumatic Hybrids

Cutting patterns for architectural membranes are generally characterised by rational approaches to surface discretisation and minimisation of geometric deviation between discrete elements that comprise the membrane. In this paper, we present an alternative approach for cutting pattern generation to those described in the literature. Our method employs computational techniques of clustering and graph-traversal to operate on arbitrary design meshes. These design meshes can contain complex curvature, including anticlastic curvatures. Curvature analysis of the design mesh provides the input to the cutting pattern generation method and the net topology generation method used to produce a constraint net for a given membrane. We test our computational design approach through an iterative cycle of digital and physical prototyping before realising an air-inflated cable restrained pneumatic structural hybrid, at full-scale. Using a Lidar captured point-cloud model, we evaluate our results by comparing the geometrical deviation of the realised structure to that of the target design geometry. We argue that this work presents new potentials for membrane expression and aesthetic by allowing free-patterning of the membrane, but identify current limits of the workflow that impede the use of the design method across the breadth of current architectural membrane applications. Nevertheless, we identify possible architectural scenarios in which the current method would be suitable.