ACSA Special Session: AI Entanglements

/


Robert Stuart-Smith will be participating on March 16th in the ACADIA Board of Directors' ACSA Special Session: AI Entanglements at ACSA's 112th Annual Meeting in Vancouver together with Leighton Beaman (Cornell), Dana Cupkova (CMU), Shelby Doyle (ISU), Benjamin Ennemoser (TxAM), and Biayna Bogosian (FIU). Stuart-Smith will be showcasing pioneering work in artificial intelligence from the Autonomous Manufacturing Research Lab and MSD-RAS program. The presentation, AI in Autonomous Systems, explores architectural design and pedagogy through the leveraging of various degrees of autonomy in 3D modelling, robotic fabrication and collective robotic construction activities. AI in this work encompasses a broad range of computational methods including deep learning, deep reinforcement learning, multi-agent systems, genetic algorithms and more. More fundamentally, much of the work operates through custom applications of computer vision, allowing degrees of autonomous perception to inform site analysis, generative design, optimization, robotic fabrication and collective robotic construction activities. Several design approaches are presented from the Autonomous Manufacturing Research Lab and Penn’s post-professional master's program – MSD-RAS. In this work, design operates vicariously through authored semi-autonomous systems in both physical and 3D graphics-based domains.




Venice 2023 Architecture Biennale Exhibition: Towards an Aerial Additive Manufactured Architecture

/

Exhibit in Palazzo Bembo, Time-Space-Existence EXHIBITION CURATED BY THE European Capital of Culture, Venice.

Venice 2023 Architecture Biennale Exhibition: Towards an Aerial Additive Manufactured Architecture
"Time Space Existence", Palazzo Bembo, Venice, 20th May - 26th November 2023
Curators: European Capital of Culture

The construction industry is adopting additive manufacturing (AM) technologies for onsite construction due to their ability to reduce the time and cost of building. On-site AM typically involves the continuous extrusion of horizontal layers of material using a gantry larger than the build volume, to move a single extruder mechanism. Transporting and installing such gantry systems limits AM to easily accessible sites. In contrast, Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial AM) enables swarm-based, parallel manufacturing in remote or hard-to-access locations, providing greater flexibility and boundless manufacturing. Having recently published in Nature a demonstration of the world’s first Aerial AM with cementitious and composite materials in-flight (Zhang et al. 2022), ongoing research includes enhancements to the manufacturing approach and a series of architectural design demonstrations of the technology through simulation and/or physical manufactured outcomes.

Aerial AM research was recently exhibited at the 2023 Venice Biennale of Architecture, several videos of Aerial AM technology were featured adjacent to architectural designs developed using the same robot control framework in simulation to speculate on the potential of aerial additively manufactured architecture. Two projects were presented: a tower of near-infinite height (Ander et al. 2019) and a large-span shell (Stuart-Smith, Darekar, et al. 2023). Both explore the logistical and aesthetic possibilities of an unbounded swarm-constructed architecture that is partially designed through the act of aerial swarm construction.

Credits:
Institutions: University of Pennsylvania, Imperial College London, University College London, University of Bath, and Empa.
Aerial AM Venice Biennale Exhibition: Robert Stuart-Smith, Mirko Kovac, Franklin (Renhu) Wu, Yusuf Furkan Kaya, Lachlan Orr, and Adam Blood.
Aerial AM Shell: Robert Stuart-Smith, Patrick Danahy, Mirko Kovac, and Vijay Pawar.
Aerial AM Tower: Robert Stuart-Smith, Chris Williams, Paul Shepherd, Vijay Pawar, Mirko Kovac, Andrew Homick, and Patrick Danahy.
Aerial AM Project leaders: Mirko Kovac, Robert Stuart-Smith, Stefan Leutenegger, Vijay Pawar, Chris Williams, Paul Shepherd, and Richard Ball. For more information, See Zhang et al., Nature, 609, no. 7928 (2022): 709-717.

Nature publication on Aerial Additive Manufacturing Research

/

AERIAL ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING (AERIAL AM)

In the journal Nature, we introduce a method of additive manufacturing, referred to as aerial additive manufacturing (Aerial-AM), that utilizes a team of aerial robots inspired by natural builders such as wasps who use collective building methods. We pioneer demonstrations in untethered additive manufacturing in-flight with custom cementitious and composite materials using custom drone hardware, control systems and a mission-planning framework that supports swarm-based parallel manufacturing, a semi-autonomous approach to collective robotic construction.

The research was developed by a consortium of researchers at University of Pennsylvania, Imperial College London, University College, Empa and the Swiss Federal Laboratories of Materials Science and Technology, University of Bath, Queen Mary University of London, and Technical University of Munich.

See:
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-04988-4
https://www.aml-penn.com/blog/2021/cipd-a67zn

New Scientist Article on Aerial Additive Manufacturing

/

New Scientist Article on Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial AM)

Jeremy Hsu interviewed Robert Stuart-Smith for his feature article “Drone swarm that 3D prints cement structures could construct buildings” in NewScientist, 21st September 2022. See: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2339096-drone-swarm-that-3d-prints-cement-structures-could-construct-buildings/


CAADRIA Conference ‘22 Presentation Award

/


Robert Stuart-Smith and Patrick Danahy received an award for their paper Presentation “Visual Character Analysis Within Algorithmic Design: Quantifying Aesthetics Relative To Structural And Geometric Design Criteria” in CAADRIA’s ‘POST CARBON’ - 27th International Conference of the Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia, Sydney, Australia, 9th April – 15th April 2022