Critical Manipulation ! [A Technical Memo to Self: Architectrual Robotics beyond Fabrication]

Critical Manipulation !

A Technical Memo to Self: Architectrual Robotics beyond Fabrication

Critical Manipulation !

A Technical Memo to Self: Architectrual Robotics beyond Fabrication Ji Shi | | Ji Shi

0. Intro This document includes three computational design and digital fabrication projects: Robotic Crystal Growth (2016), A Room for a Head (2015) and Robotic 3D Printing (2014). Their titles in this essay, though seem to be non-digital, actually are considered thoroughly and present the underlying questions of the filed I’m trying to address, respectively the critique of dependency on

high-resolution material in construction, new social scenarios of human-robot cohabitation, and the question of the function of machine. With a belief that digital computation actually has a larger value to architecture than the way it being used today, these paragraphs are documented in this memo to remind myself that architecture involving digital computation should think thoroughly an entire set of questions that are as social, cultural, political as they are technological. The digital manipulation should be critical.

1. Goopy, Fluffy and Floppy - 2016

1. Goopy, Fluffy and Floppy - 2016

1.1 A Dematerialized High Resolution

1.1 A Dematerialized High Resolution

1. Stereotomy, for example, was the technique of stone cutting which helps people realize complex geometries. To design and realize delicate forms, Stereotomy is mainly planned and developed by using layout drawings, the so called ”traints”, which show the orthographic projection of typically complex and expressive stone structures. See Evans, Robin. The projective cast: architecture and its three geometries. MIT press, 2000.

2. Chinese traditional carpenters shared a proverb goes like “super tight joints for vehicles, very loose joints for buildings, pushto-fit joints for furniture”, which precisely described how people leave reasonable redundancy in different fabrication process as a response to limitations caused by low resolution techniques.

3. There are a lot of digital fabrication work showing the pursuit of high resolution process. The MIT Sean Collier Memorial by Höweler +Yoon showed the combination of traditional stereotomy crafts method with digital manufacturing. The precision of tools and the continuous re-calibration process produced final stone pieces that are within a 0.5-millimeter tolerance between the actual stone and the digital model; The fabrication of Passion Façade Narthex Columns of the Sagrada Familia basilica in

Does high resolution fabrication require high resolution material?

Conventionally speaking, the answer is yes and this describes most traditional craftsmanship - a process that requires high level precision from the very beginning. And this indeed brings challenges to architecture since building contains a series of materialization process in multiple scales with different material.

People have developed two solutions for this: On one hand, people have developed techniques that guide them going through this difficult process by making things as high resolution as they can1. On the other hand, people have developed a whole set of error-correction method, leaving reasonable redundancy for potential imprecision or deflection to compensate the low resolution fabrication process2. And this actually implies how digital technologies were introduced into fabrication filed. On one side, with precise fabrication tools like Computer Numerical Control (CNC) or industrial robot, architects are capable of easily iterating the fabrication process and pushing the resolution to a level below 1mm3. This methodology has been tested and developed through the past ten years4 and has brought incredible achievements. However, on the other side, the control

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and feedback concept commonly used in automatic control system raised the question can we build “good” things with “bad” parts5?

This inspires the fabrication process by introducing live feedback and interaction into the filed, and the focus is no longer the frozen model but the dynamic fabricating process. This tendency gradually became the current fashion of robotic research6, and the novel part of robotic fabrication is no longer about the industrial efficiency or the high-level resolution, but the intelligence that locates at somewhere else.

In other words, we can say that high resolution features always exist, but has transformed from the obvious material realm to more invisible areas. Gramazio & Kohler claims the digitalization of architecture to be the dematerialization of architecture and argues that intelligence dissolves into the infinite realms of data flows and networks7. Hence, technology didn’t simply remove the resolution requirement. However, we are facing an equally difficult topic - a dematerialized high resolution8.

1.2 Cooking! Fabricate with Loose Stuff “Robotic Crystal Growth – Controlled 3D Manipulation of Chemical Reactions9” (Fig.1) is our response to the discussion above. In order to radically implement the notion of “fabricate high-res from low-res” and realize a dematerialized precision, we decided to start with a relatively loose and uncontrollable method of materialization - cooking with chemicals10. The culture of architects cooking with chemical dated back to 1960s when there existed a fanaticism of bubbles. Ant Farm published their INFLATOCOOKBOOK in Jan.1971, and the concept of cooking here refers to their fabrication skills and material/accessories selections11. Some of the material, polyethylene for example, are still the favorite of many current architecture practices (but

Fig. 1 Robotic Crystal Growth. Robot is applied to fabricate loose material to generate controllable form.

Barcelona by Mark Bury (executive architect and researcher) used a 7-axis robotic saw to cut the stone with absolute precision within 1 millimeter. See Yuan, Philip F., et al. Robotic Futures. Tongji University Press, 2015.

4. In 2005, the world’s first robotic laboratory for the research of architectural design and fabrication process was built at ETH Zurich by Prof. Fabio Gramazio and Prof. Matthias Kohler. As far as I observed, among their primitive practice, the novel implications were largely associated with high resolution fabrication technique brought by robotics. The smoothness of parametric surface of the Programmed Wall (2006), the stability of the Structural Oscillations (2008) won’t be achieved without the super precise manipulation of the robotic arm. These projects are largely different from their later researches involving New Physic, algorithm codes and reality matters. See Kohler, Matthias, et al. The Robotic Touch: How Robots Change Architecture. Park books, 2014, pp. 25-99.

5. One of the most important principles of feedback control is to build reliable components from unreliable parts. To be specific, this notion relies on the closed loop control system in which newly occurred errors become part of input to the system and particular mathematical models (A proportional-integratedderivative control model, for example) will process the errors and eliminate it to make the system stable. See Rowley, Clancy, Introduction to Feedback Control. Lulu, 2016, pp.1-20.

6. The Rob-Arch 2016 conference stressed the transformation from robotic fabrication to creative robotics emphasizing the integration of human-robot interactions informed by sensor input and real-time feedback under diverse environmental conditions.

See Reinhardt, Dagmar, Rob Saunders, et al., editors. Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2016. Springer International Publishing, 2016.

7. See Kohler, Matthias, et al. The Robotic Touch: How Robots Change Architecture. Park books, 2014, pp. 9.

8. See Ibid. pp. 381-87. The difficulty here doesn’t simply refer to the functional problems brought by algorithm, code and language. It’s about the cultural significance that these technologies may obtain during the process that they are developed and used. These technologies, like the traditional crafts, are not ready-made for design to solve a “bake-andshake” problem. There must be a long and painful process of iterations before it can actually “make sense”, And this is where the resolution requirements locates and why they are difficult.

1.2 Cooking! Fabricate with Loose Stuff

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9. “Robotic Crystal Growth- Controlled 3D Manipulation of Chemical Reactions” (hereinafter to be referred as Robotic Crystal Growth) is a project by Ji Shi, Wan Li and Ivy Feng in ARC574 Computing and Imaging in Architecture instructed by Ryan Luke Johns, Fall 2015, Princeton University School of Architecture.

10. There is a great difference between manipulation of conventional building material, bricks for example, with the manipulation of commonly understood as unbuildable material, cooking with chemical for example. The former projects silently admit their position of starting at an existing tectonic culture and trying to elaborate it to a novel level. This is different from the latter position in which things are questioned from a more fundamental level and trying to be expanded into new territories of architecture with preliminary research. We take the latter position.

11. See Ant Farm, Inflatocookbook: a pneu-age tech book. Ant Farm (Design Group), 1971. The significance here is that they transformed the architecture problem into varies of nonarchitecture problems. The book didn’t talk about the space itself, but rather approach it by talking about the cutting of material, choice of fans, etc. And they took this very seriously as the most important issue of their architecture proposal.

12. Otherlab, for example, did several projects involving inflatable double-layered polyethylene pillows. The same material is now processed with more advanced techniques such as laser cutting.

See https://otherlab.com/ 13. See Ilievski, Filip, et al. "Soft robotics for chemists." Angewandte Chemie 123.8 (2011): 1930-1935. Soft robotics refers to fluidic actuators consisting of elastomeric matrices with embedded flexible materials.

14. The new “cook book” of soft robotics is called soft robotics toolkit. See http://softroboticstoolkit.com/ 15. See Cartwright, Julyan HE, et al. "Formation of chemical gardens." Journal of colloid and interface science 256.2 (2002): 35159.

16. The chemical garden crystal growth also showed architectural implications in other perspectives. For example, it has been speculated that the membranes of chemical gardens produced in submarine vents may be an ideal site for life (See Cartwright, Julyan HE, Bruno Escribano, and C. Ignacio Sainz-Díaz. "Chemicalgarden formation, morphology, and composition. I. Effect of the nature of the cations." Langmuir 27.7 (2011): 3286-3293.). However, we mainly focus on matching the form-generating potential with its uncontrollable natural growth properties.

17. Actually, we also tested different kinds of metal salts,

cooked in a different way)12. Currently, there is also a growing interest of inflatable silicone, which is commonly known as soft robotics13. And architects follow the new cook book and literally cook stuff to make form14.

With a deep belief in cooking with chemicals, what we decide to start with is known as chemical gardens (Fig. 2) - the plant like structures formed upon placing together a soluble metal salt, often in the form of a seed crystal, and an aqueous solution of one of many anions, often sodium silicate15. We consider this form-generating process to be a good test filed since it shows an intuitive but relatively uncontrolled (in terms of architecture form making) materialization process16. The gap between its frommaking potential and the uncontrolled natural growth property is what we want to overcome. The basic principle of this research is to use material sensing and robotic manipulation to monitor and control the growth in different conditions.

In this experiment, we choose to use sodium silicate solution with a volume ratio of water: sodium silicate = 4:1 (“the solution”).

And we selected white color calcium chloride (CaCl2) as main reaction metal salts (“the chemical”)17.

1.3 High Resolution Machines: Making Uncontrolled Things Controllable Despite different morphologies as tubes, bulbous, hairs, plumes18, the dominating feature of the growth is that the chemical will always follows the direction of gravity - It’s vertical19. In order to control the formation of the crystal growth20 and transform it into a relatively high resolution form, it’s crucial to get rid of the limitation of vertical direction. We also found that the growth is a relatively slow process which normally takes 3-5 minutes to be visible and takes 30-50 minutes to have a structure around 50 millimeters21. This gives us the window to control if we can slowly

Fig. 2 Chemical garden growth in lab (©Langmuir, 2011)

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change the direction of the growth while the structure is growing.

We focus on this time-based property and tried to control the form step by step instead of fabricating the whole thing all at once. However, the direction of gravity is hard to alter under current lab conditions. What we propose is an alternative method in normal gravity condition but analogues to changing-gravity condition. The growth needs a base plane catching the initial aggregation of the chemical. The hypothesis is: If we constantly change the orientation of this base plane, every newly grown structure is supposed to have a different angle compared to the previous ones though all of them still maintains vertical gravity direction when they are growing.

We designed a machine to test this idea (Fig. 3). In the front is a platform carrying a vessel containing the solution and the chemical; in the back is a servo driven rack-and-pinion actuator which can tilt the platform by lifting one side up. This tilting mechanism constantly changes the orientation of the vessel hence changes the orientation of the base plane of the growth. It is analogous to growing the chemical under different directions of gravity. The experiment results (Fig. 4) proved our hypothesis that the direction of growth can be manipulated by re-orientation of the base plane level.

In order to use this concept and make more complex form, we need actuation that contains more degrees of freedom (DOF) to replace 2D tilting actuation. We designed and calibrated a robotic setup for further experiment (Fig. 5)22. We applied an ABB IRB 7600 Robotic Manipulator (“the robot”) to implement the motion control. The end-effector is a mobile platform made with plexi. The end-effector works only as the base plane for the growth and is completely manipulated by the robot (no actuator on the end-effector). Next to the robot is the working space, a desk was set as working object23. An external material extruder (Fig. 6) was

rack- and-pinion actuator

tilting platform

including blue color copper(II) sulfate (CuSO4), dark red color Cobalt(II) chloride (CoCl2), purple(pink) color manganese(II) chloride (MnCl2), orange color iron(III) chloride (FeCl3) and green color nickel(II) nitrate (NiCl2). CaCl2 is chosen because it’s relatively cheap.

All the chemicals are purchased from California Chemicals.

1.3 High Resolution Machines: Making Uncontrolled Things Controllable 18. There are existing researches showing how different experimental conditions influence the morphology of growth (See Barge, Laura M., et al. "Characterization of iron–phosphate– silicate chemical garden structures."Langmuir 28.8 (2011): 37143721.). This is not our primary focus. We consider these variations as a relatively acceptable blurry boundary and we focus on the control of the overall shape in a macro perspective. See section 1.5 for more discussion.

19. The variations of different morphologies in micro level is a product of forced convection driven by osmotic pressure through the semipermeable membrane, while the general consistent feature of being vertical is based on the free convection due to buoyancy, since the ejected solution is generally lighter than the external silicate. See Cartwright, Julyan HE, Bruno Escribano, and C. Ignacio Sainz-Díaz. "Chemical-garden formation, morphology, and composition. I. Effect of the nature of the cations." Langmuir 27.7 (2011): 3286-3293.

20. The crystal growth of calcium chloride (CaCl2)(“the chemical”) in sodium silicate solution with a volume ratio of water: sodium silicate = 4:1 (“the solution”), hereinafter to be referred as “the growth”.

21. Due to the existing researches, cobalt chloride garden (in 3M sodium silicate) takes 40min to grow out a structure around 25mm wide and 40mm high (See Cartwright, Julyan HE, Bruno

rack-and-pinion actuator CuSO4

ABB IRB 7600 Robotic Manipulator

sodium silicate

End-effector

CuSO4 growth growth maintain vertial

Solution container working object (desk)

SG 9g micro servo Fig. 3 Machine with a rack-and-pinion actuator to tilt the platform

External material extruder

Fig. 4 Result showing the direction of growth relative to the vessel can be manipulated through tilting

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Fig. 5 Final setup includes a ABB IRB 7600 Robotic manipulator, a material extruder, a solution container,etc. See Appendix-I for details

Escribano, and C. Ignacio Sainz-Díaz. "Chemical-garden formation, morphology, and composition. I. Effect of the nature of the cations." Langmuir 27.7 (2011): 3286-3293.).

22. The robotic experiment was done in the Embodied Computation Lab of Princeton University School of Architecture. See Apendix-I for more introduction.

23. Working object is used in grasshopper plug-in MUSSEL when generating the ABB RPAID code. It helps automatically orient everything to the coordinates system of selected working object. This brings a lot convenience since we can draw at the world absolute coordinates system without worrying about the mismatch between where we draw in Rhino model and where we actually set up the project. In practice, we did two calibrations, one is about the end-effector and the other is about the working object. Once we measured the coordinates of working object with the robot, we keep the working object fixed and input the coordinates back to our MUSSEL code. For more information about this, see section 1.4.

24. The delivering mechanism here is based on the fact that the diameter of the opening of the funnel and the diameter of the granule of the chemical is similar, and the former is a bit bigger than the latter. So, when there is no vibration, multiple granules will make the opening stuck. And the vibration will make the granules going through the narrow opening one by one. This system doesn’t work well due to the uncertainty of the dimension of the granule as well as the low efficiency of the vibration. A better iteration (not done yet) of extruder is a metal tube with drill head inside, and this will provide more precise control of the extrusion of the chemical since they can grind the chemical while extruding them.

25. For example, the position of external material extruder may need to be adjusted due to the collision between the robot and

placed on the working desk next to the container of the solution (“the container”). The extruder contains a push-pull solenoid actuator which is programmed to constantly hit a funnel fixed on a cantilever slab. The funnel contains the chemical and when being hit, the vibration of the funnel will make the chemical dropping into the solution24. Apart from these, there are also tools and materials for solution refilling, filtration, photo/video documentation, etc.

We consider these machines, including the tilting platform during the iteration and the whole setup for final, to be part of the design process25 instead of something that only help us implement the final design product.

1.4 Toolpath: More than CNC Contours Generating toolpath is a crucial step for CAD/CAM based materialization. However, the formal plasticity afforded by digital design is locked down and channeled into a single rigid and tightly toleranced toolpath26. Recently, an increasing interest of starting design from toolpath27 is taking place the conventional digital materialization process in which CNC contour toolpath remains as an unquestionable step.

Following this idea, we started the design from drawing toolpath directly. We imagine the initial input to be a spatial curve, and the very end output should be a pipe along this curve. If these two match each other, the hypothesis that a controllable form can be fabricated will be proved. We drew a 3D spiral curve in Rhino and converted it into polylines with 7 linear segments28.

These 7 segments correspond to 7 separated growth that we are going to make during the whole process. For each segment, the normal plane about this segment is extracted at the end point29, which implies the correct orientation of this segment during growth (Fig. 7). The schematic diagram (Fig. 8) shows the

Subsequent segments

7

solenoid hitting the funnel

6 5

Preceding segment

4

Normal planes

3 2

dropping point

Finished segments

metal salts

Fig. 6 The external material extruder is designed to deliver the material to dropping point

End-effector base plane

1

Fig. 7 A designed toolpath is divided into 7 segments with extracted normal planes

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Fig. 8 Schematic diagram showing one iteration of growth

workflow of the 4th segment (See Appendix-I for the toolpath of all segments). As shown in diagram, the key is to orient the preceding base plane to rest level with the top of the solution in Z-axis while keeping it under the material dropping point30. So, the preceding segment is in vertical orientation and can be grown based on the natural growing pattern. Since in the experiment we are always manipulating the base plane of the first segment, which is also the plane of the end-effector, we need to figure out where this plane should go and this decides the toolpath of the robot. So, we compared the orientation differential between the preceding base plane with the very first base plane, and orient the preceding one to level under the dropping point. The overall motion of the robot is about repeating this orientation method for every segment in the growth (Fig. 9).

The mathematics above is quite straightforward but it only deals with ideal situation, in which we assume that the endeffector plane (or the plane of the first growth) can go where ever it needs to be without collisions. However, collisions often happen due to the limited size of the container. In the experiment, we detected collisions through visual observation31. Sometimes the collision can be avoided because there is freedom to rotate about the Z-axis32 without changing the orientation and location of the preceding base plane. And sometimes we need to change the dropping point to make full use of the spatial diagonal length of the container to place the grown structure. However, there were also some collisions that can’t be avoid. For example, the container is not enough no matter how we played around with the rotation, or the container is enough but the structure was placed in a very steep orientation and finally fell over33. For these situations, we need to change the design by re-drawing the curve in Rhino and re-generate the RAPID code34.

The tool path was developed using Grasshopper and MUSSEL35.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

Fig. 9 Schematic diagram showing the simulation of robot motion

the tank, etc. See section 1.4.

1.4 Toolpath: More than CNC Contours 26. See Johns, Ryan Luke, Axel Kilian, and Nicholas Foley. "Design approaches through augmented materiality and embodied computation."Â Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2014. Springer International Publishing, 2014. 319-332.

27. For example, Grasshopper plug-in Silkworm (initiated by A. Holloway, A Mamou-Mani and K Kjelstrup-Johnston) translates Grasshopper and Rhino geometry into GCode for 3d printing, and allows for customized manipulation of tool path which brings more printing possibility other than layer-by-layer solid printed volume (See http://projectsilkworm.com/about/). Bandsaw Bands

by Greyshed (R. Johns and N. Foley) has toolpath strategically designed into the available geometry of the flitch so the fabrication process consumes less material, nearly zero waste and shorter tool path length (See Yuan, Philip F., et al. Robotic Futures.

Tongji University Press, 2015, pp. 142-147).

28. The division number is a tradeoff between resolution and fabrication difficulty. The more we divide the curve, the better smoothness we can get. However, since each segment becomes shorter, the ratio of growth deviation to segment dimension will increase. Dividing into 7 is based on the consideration of maintaining relatively small fabrication error. After all, we are pursuing the control of material, not completely the smoothness of geometry.

29. End point means the point that closer to the subsequent segment, which is also the starting point of the subsequent segment.

30. The dropping point here refers to the projected point of the funnel of the material extruder on the solution level. This point is normally fixed (as experiment setup), however it can also be moved due to the collision.

31. In this experiment, we did the visual collision detection by observing the motion closely with eyes. Actually, we wrote a Processing(https://processing.org/) program which used a webcam to capture the highest point of the grown structure, we tried to use this to detect the potential collisions by measuring the length of the existing growth and compare to the size of the container.

This method can let the experiment run more autonomously, but it hasn’t been integrated into the whole experiment yet.

32. The rotation about Z-axis is also involved when the joints of robot reached to their limitations and get locked.

33. We actually met the falling-over situation several times, which was very heart-breaking by the way. We attached a metal mesh

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onto the surface of the end effector to provide more friction. This helped a lot but the falling-over situation is still at risk.

34. These human-in-the-loop interventions were the great achievement of this experimental method, it holds and interesting position as a design process which is driven by the limitation of technology. And the process which took the output from machine as the input to design actually closed the loop of an originally separated design-fabrication work-flow.

35. MUSSEL is developed by GREYSHED and Princeton University School of Architecture. It is a free and open source tool for generating RAPID code for ABB robots. Working within Grasshopper for Rhino 3D, it allows the user to easily generate robot code from a list of input planes. (See http://www.gshed.com/work/mussel/)

1.5 Precise Core vs. Fluffy Edges 36. As described in previous part, the morphology of the reaction of chemical garden varies a lot itself. It shows multiple morphologies as hairs, bulbs, plumes, tubes, spirals, worms, etc.…

These qualities are highly associated with experimental setup and conditions, such as the temperature of reaction, choice of chemical, density of solution, etc.…These are not the focus of this research, so we consider the variations caused by these factors are acceptable.

37. For example, no matter how sharp the overall shape looks like, the CNC milled work will always fillet the comer into rounded edges due to the mechanism of spinning drilling tools (See Aitcheson, Robert, Jonathan Friedman, and Thomas Seebohm. "3Axis CNC milling in architectural design." International Journal of Architectural Computing 3.2 (2005): 161-180.).

central axis of the fabricated form

toolpath digital model

Fig. 10 Overlapped image showing the match between the toolpath in digital model and the final fabricated form

The code and more information is listed in Appendix-I for future readers.

1.5 Precise Core vs. Fluffy Edges In the technical level, the most obvious achievement of this research is that the final outcome of the experiment showed great formal coherency with the digital input. This can be observed if we extract the center axis of the overall from and compare to the ideal curve (the toolpath) we drew in the Rhino model (Fig. 10).

We consider the result to be a relatively high resolution outcome compared to all the original material experiments we did at the beginning. And this has largely proved our hypothesis that we can fabricate a relatively high resolution form using loose and low resolution material. The crucial part is the precise and smart workflow with machines and robots that helps compensating the imprecision of the material itself.

What remains interesting is the edge of the growth, which still remains to be largely uncontrolled and low resolution.

These blurry edges are the result of multiple reasons due to the experimental conditions of the chemical reaction36, and it doesn’t weaken the obvious implication of the precise central axis of the overall form. Also, even for well-developed fabrication tools, CNC for example, the close up look of the edge is always not as satisfying as the overall form37. This is the limitation of the tool/ material itself and is definitely part of the pursuit of fabrication, but apart from this part, the method of controlling the whole system is where the big potential locates and is the thing architects should design with.

From broader perspectives, this research also shows other interesting features such as being able to fabricate without direct physical manipulation of the material itself, or the fabrication process is highly time based, the physical properties (color, texture) changes during the fabrication process, or the stability of the thing is highly associated with the fabrication environment, etc. A lot of these features shows the potential to be developed into an equally interesting and contributive research, and this precisely supports the position that fabrication should neither be the automatic implementation of “a thing”, nor the isolated research of material and tools. Digital technologies help us to integrated all these areas and make the intelligence actually stay at somewhere beyond fabrication, normally in dematerialized level. And what we see as the outcome of a “fabricated thing” is only the tip of iceberg. And when we are amazed by the delicate fabrication work, it is the underlying dematerialized high resolution that supports the whole spectacle.

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2. Synesthesia, Empathic and Sociopetal - 2015

2. Synesthesia, Empathic and Sociopetal - 2015

2.1 Architectural Robotics: More than a Technological Issue

2.1 Architectural Robotics: More than a Technological Issue

Robot assisting human construction work is not novel anymore.

A lot of precedents38, either conceptual or realized, has demonstrated this scenario already39. This section discusses the new social scenarios developed through the human-robot cohabitation. Under this notion, the definition of “architecture” here is far more than a passive spatial container, while the meaning of “robotic” doesn’t merely refer to a series of motion manipulation - architecture robotics has its own significance in both technological and social level. Antoine Picon argues that digital technology brings a new set of codification covering both social and technological filed, and under this circumstance the decision made by the designer is more important than ever before40. François Roche claims that machines are linked closely with our bodies and minds as well as our own biotopes or habitats41.

There are more than enough handy digital tools available for design, the key is to believe that autonomous qualities embedded in these tools are capable of (and actually are) dramatically changing everyday social experience and creating fundamentally different living scenarios. What architecture robotics really brought into the filed is the opportunity to fundamentally rethink architecture design from bottom-up, instead of a magic box of moving/transforming/blinking/beeping accessories that can be added to architecture and make it “wow, amazing” all of a sudden42.

Motivated by this notion, I consider architecture to be the initial physical setup which allows complex behavior to be developed by other equally important agents (algorithms, machines, robots, etc.)43. Only knowing the latter part is not enough since we can’t just adapt a random digital feature to building and call it architecture design. What considered as conventional architecture knowledge is still important (even more important) since it tells us which technology to choose, which social problem to deal with, etc.44. The following research-based project, “A room for head & rooms in an autonomous community” (Fig. 11)45, aims to develop a human-machine cohabitation with

38. The first “machine assisting human construction” scenario can be found in Villemard’s 1910 drawings Chantier de construction électrique. The first "robot in real construction" dated back to 1984 when Shimizu Construction Company – one of Japan’s largest construction firms – applied Shimizu Site Robot-1 (SSR-1) to do the spraying of fireproofing of the floor (See T. Yoshida et al., “Development of spray robot for fireproof cover work” (paper presented at the 1st International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (ISARC), Pittsburgh, USA, 1984)).

In the design filed, first robotic laboratory for the research of architecture design and fabrication was built in ETH Zurich, 2005, has contributed a lot digital fabrication work to the filed over the past decades.

39. This doesn’t mean robot assisting human construction is conventional. Actually, this scenario is also dramatically changing.

Gramazaio and Kohler refer this change as a “second digital age” of architecture. “It is now possible to regard computer programming and architectural construction as conditional upon each other, and to see their reciprocity as fundamental to architecture in the digital age.” (See Kohler, Matthias, et al. The Robotic Touch: How Robots Change Architecture. Park books, 2014.)

40. See Picon, Antoine, Emmanuel J. Petit, and Lucia Allais. "The ghost of architecture: the project and its codification." Perspecta 35 (2004): 8-19. ”…buildings must obey an entire set of prescriptions that are as social as they technological.” And “When manipulation becomes so easy that it can cycle indefinitely, even without the direction of designers since machines can run all by themselves, the decisions actually made by this designer emerge thoroughly reinforced. Here again, this reinforcement plays in favor of a codification of procedures of design more advanced than ever before.’”

41. See Roche, François, Camille Lacadee, and Stephan Henrich.

"Psychaestenia." Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2016. Springer International Publishing, 2016. 16-31. “…However, it seems very naïve to reduce the machine to this … purely functional and mechanical approach; limiting it exclusively to

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a Cartesian notion of productive power, located in the visible spectrum of appearance and fact. In parallel, machines are producing artefacts, assemblages, multiple associations and desires, and are infiltrating the very raison d'être of our own bodies and minds that are codependent on our own biotopes or habitats.”

42. Roche criticized the current use of machine as being overrated since some of them still remain in elaborating existing techniques as the extension of the hand, while at the same time being considered as something novel to architecture.

Roche mentioned that “There are many machines, so many desirable machines that in fact pretend to do more than they are doing.” (Roche, François, Camille Lacadee, and Stephan Henrich.

"Psychaestenia." Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2016. Springer International Publishing, 2016. 16-31.)

43. Axel Kilian refers this physical initial set up as “physical memory” of architecture which provides basis for algorithms to develop further complexities for the architecture. See Kilian, Axel. Defining digital space through a visual language. Diss. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2000.

44. The emphases of physical setup here is nothing against the significance or the autonomy feature of digital and computation.

The latter is equally important and being discussed a lot already.

45. The project is done during ARC 505B Architecture Design Studio: Architecture Robotics – Embodied Computation, instructed

by Prof. Axel Kilian, Fall, 2015, Princeton University School of Architecture.

a focus on the relation between human sensory awareness with architecture social implications.

2.2 Being Digital: Constructed Senses

46. Pallasmaa, Juhani. The eyes of the skin: architecture and the senses. John Wiley & Sons, 2012. “I believe that many aspects of the pathology of everyday architecture today can likewise be

Senses are crucial to architecture. A place is always sensed46.

There are two ways of constructing sensory properties of architecture. One familiar way for architects refers to what being known as phenomenology, in which design focuses on how environment influences human beings47. In this way, architects study material, color, texture, light, sound, etc., and construct a sensory experience by defining the environment. On the contrary, a sensory complexity can be achieved by directly constructing them on human body. After all, human body is the center where separated senses are processed48 and what we think we experienced is just the tip of iceberg49. The focus on human body actually reflects the origin of architecture. “Wall” and “Garment” are cognates50, and this common etymological origin shows the intimate relationship between the enclosure of a room and the enclosure of a body. Since architects normally design the source of sensory inputs, we are interested in the opposite which focuses on altering human sense by directly creating/altering it on human body.

We actually already have a lot of digital technologies doing this - they precisely give our body particular sensory inputs altering our senses and make us feel a dramatic difference as if something from a larger perspective is changing51. The strength of doing this digitally is that we don’t need to re-construct all sensory settings to simulate specific senses - we can achieve this by only re-constructing selective ones. And since sensory design unpacks our feeling through a time-based domain, digital provides better control due to the ability of switching around different states quickly. More importantly, the digital devices are

Fig. 11 A Room for a Head & Rooms in an autonomous community. Architectural speculations developed through drawing vs physical model driven by Algorithm.

Fig. 12 People are more sensitive once their vision been blocked. (René Magritte. The Lovers. Le Perreux-sur-Marne, 1928)

2.2 Being Digital: Constructed Senses

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not only a wearable machine, it is a minimum human-machine cohabitation and imply a lot more potential.

2.3 A Room for Head: a Vision Blocker, a Parasitic Architecture and a Social Encourager Following the concept above, we decided to radically minimize architecture to the dimension which only enclose the head of human being, where all the constructed architectural senses are being processed. We focus on using the room for head to perform complex behaviors and improving social problems.

The Room for a Head project aims to encourage social engagement. There are two basic social patterns, namely sociofugal and sociopetal52, which further form multiple social stereotypes. These negative stereotypes are formed because we have a strong belief in our prejudgments in social situations.

These prejudgments are produced mostly based on our vision inputs – people always match what they see with what they think it means. This stereotype is very hard to alter since the vision is the most important and fundamental input among all channels of senses53. What interesting is once vision is blocked, people are more sensitive in other channels (Fig. 12). What we propose is a room on people’s head which decides when to block/open the vision channel for its owner.

The project is a goggle-shape machine carried by people (“the hosts”) on their head (Fig. 13). There are two sets of shades covering two eyes. These two sets of shades are controlled separately by two groups of SG 9g micro servos54. Two HC-RR04 ultrasonic distance sensors (“distance sensor”) are placed facing front left and front right direction. When the system works, it performs different patterns (Fig. 14) based on whether the distance sensor detected people inside the desirable communication range

gear linkage

SG 9g micro servo

understood through analysis of the epistemology of the senses…”

47. Norberg-Schulz, Christian. Genius loci: Towards a phenomenology of architecture. Rizzoli, 1980.

48. The question “how come people have undivided sense when the sensory organs are all separated” actually has been discussed for a long time. The question was firstly raised by ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle (384BC-322BC) assuming the existence of what came to be called a sensus communis (sommon senses).

Around 1950s, the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) elaborated on the individual differences in gestalt perceptions. According to this view, all human experiences are based in the human body, which explains the unity of the senses.

See Van Campen, Cretien. The hidden sense: Synesthesia in art and science. Mit Press, 2010.

49. “In fact, your body shapes your sensory experience on an unconscious level (under “sea level”, so to speak) and you are aware only of the tip of the iceberg.” See Van Campen, Cretien. The hidden sense: Synesthesia in art and science. MIT Press, 2010, pp.155.

50. See Semper, Gottfried, Harry Francis Mallgrave, and Michael Robinson. Style in the technical and tectonic arts, or, Practical aesthetics. Getty Publications, 2004. “Wand (wall)” and “Gewand (Garment)” are cognates. According to Semper’s theory, the first nomad tent or simple shelter was gradually developed from the technique of ceramics, carpentry, weaving and earthwork.

51. For example, 4D cinemas constructs a realistic feeling of different physical contacts for audience by shooting air pulse in multiple frequencies; VR (virtual reality) device is capable of construction realistic 3D interactions for people without doing any change physically. Some headphones have stereophonic effects and make people feel a lot more than just hearing the sound. Etc.

a room

a

b

c

human host

Fig. 13 Schematic diagram showing mechanism of A Room for Head. And real demonstration by the author

Fig. 14 A Room for Head showing different pattern based on distance detection

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2.3 A Room for Head: a Vision Blocker, a Parasitic Architecture and a Social Encourager 52. See Lockton, Dan. "Architecture, urbanism, design and behaviour: a brief review'." Design with Intent Blog (2011).

Humphery Osmond (1917-2004) introduced the terms sociofugal and sociopetal to describe spaces which drive people apart and together, respectively. For example, airport and jails are most typical sociofugal space and space like round table dinner is sociopetal.

53. Pallasmaa argues that though usually repressed during heightened emotional states and fused with tactile sense during actual lived experience, vision dominates human sensory channels. See Pallasmaa, Juhani. The eyes of the skin: architecture and the senses. John Wiley & Sons, 2012.

54. Each group of shades is able to perform close/open actuation through the rotation of two gears that are connected to two servos.

55. “communication range” is defined based on different setup(working) conditions. In this experiment, the project is demonstrated in a classroom and the communication range is set to 1500mm. The notion that “…will detect whether there are people…” is based on the assumption that people are the only things that bounce back the ultrasonic wave since the choice of sensor here can’t tell if the obstruction is human or objects. This part needs to be improved by choosing different sensors. HCSR501 PIR motion detector sensor, commonly known as “human sensor”, is a better choice for detection the existence of human.

56. Talking about robotics, the most dominant concern is the degrees of freedom (DOF). The DOF of Room for a head project is simply set to 1 - it only contains the DOF of shades open and close without any DOF of mobility. However, the Room for a Head

Fig. 15 Social stereotypes reduced after every redirected by the room on their head

or not55. If there are no existence of human, the shades remain closed and this forces people to wander arbitrarily (Fig. 14-a).

Since people are not seeking their “communication partners”, we assume that fewer prejudgments and stereotypes exist in the situation. And when there are people showing up while the host is wandering, the shades at the side of incoming people will open (Fig. 14-b). (the two groups of shades are controlled by two distance sensors separately). This drives people to turn to meaningful directions since there actually are people around.

And when people have selected a direction and go approaching each other, both of the two shades will open since both distance detection meet the requirements(Fig. 14-c). And finally, people will enter a “allowed to talk” state after going through the “forced to wander” and “being directed” process, and this re-direction provided by the room on their head reduces negative social stereotypes and encourages social engagement (Fig. 15).

This experiment holds several interesting positions. First, it alters people’s perceptional understanding of space through physical actuations. The physical alternation like this are normally done with a large and complex set of physical space, but the Room for Head project uses digital sensing and programming which let relatively small and simple physical setup perform a complex behavior. Also, this projects questions the concept of cohabitation both in the dimension of room and also in the mobility of letting people carry it around56.

2.4 A Community Completely Made up of Corridors.

Following the vision-blocking concept, we developed the project into larger scale with further ambitions. The Room for a Head setup was scaled up to a cubic room which allows people to wander inside. 4 groups of shades are set at 4 vertical sides of the cube

Fig. 16 Selective model showing rooms with high degree of complexity being placed next to each other

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functioning as doors. And the overall setup contains multiple rooms placed next to each other in a field (Fig. 16). In this setup, a room is completely made up of doors, and the rooms next to each other forms a corridor typology. And the field of rooms are actually made up of these corridors. Each of the doors contains three physical states (“door states”), respectively open, half-half, and close. Apart from the door states, each room has another three states for the position of human (“agent states”), respectively at center, at doors, and neither these two57. There are totally 9 (32) variations for each door considering the combination of door states and agent states (Fig. 17). The following object of study is the corridor situation in between two rooms58. For each corridor, there are totally 81 (92) different states considering the combination of two doors on each side.

These 81 variations are the physical memory of this setup, and they provide great freedom of transformation for the whole filed. The problem we want to solve is to flexibly change the configuration of the space, mostly based on the variations between publicity and privacy. The tradeoff between public and private space is always considered to be a important topic of architecture. A lot of human failures occurred because of this when people try to solve a question which is beyond their intelligence59. Also, different positions around public and private space largely influence the personality of architecture60. These qualities are so crucial that the best way to rule out human error is to leave this demanding part alone and let it be designed by some smarter guys, namely computational algorithm. Although we don’t need to set up every possible situation, we still need to set a basic principle of interaction. The basic interaction rule focuses on encouraging people to meet while at the same time maintaining necessary privacy for each individual. In each corridor there are basically 3 types of interactive situations (Fig. 18): if

agent

works like a parasite and is actually carried around by the motion of the host. This position is different from the conventional understanding of a habitation.

2.4 A Community Completely Made up of Corridors.

57. “neither these two” means the agent is either outside the room (room is empty), or is approaching other doors (so neither this door position nor center position is triggered).

58. After the definition of door states, we can continue either through combining 4 doors (of one room) as the object of study, or focusing on the area in between two rooms. In this project, we chose to do the latter since the in between corridor area is where important difference can be made.

59. One most important human failure around public and private space is Pruitt-Igoe urban housing project. The improper public space as well as the overall housing strategy led Pruitt-Igoe urban housing to an infamous state of high vacancy and crime rates and finally being demolished . See Bristol, Katharine G. "The Pruitt-Igoe Myth." Journal of Architectural Education 44.3 (1991): 163-171.

60. For example, the People’s Commune in China during 1950s contains nothing but completely communal space in which order, hierarchy and dictatorship is shown through a very clear pattern. On the contrary, the Kowloon Walled City in Hongkong (1847-1993) is made up of extremely individual, highly optimized private space, in which a bottom-up beauty of flock behavior is presented.

2.5 Encoded Representation of the Space 61. The 3 door states, close, half, open, are correspondingly defined as 00, 01,10; And the 3 agent states, not inside, at door, at center, are

door

Fig. 17 Schematic diagram showing variations of door states and agent states

Fig. 18 The interaction is design to improve social engagement while maintaining necessary privacy

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respectively encoded as 00, 01, 10.

62. Here is encoded rule: digits 1, 2 are agent state A, digits 3, 4 are agent state B, digits 5, 6 are door state A, digits 7, 8 are door state B. For example, the string “10010001” should be comprehend as “10|01|00|01”, which means agent A is staying at the center of room A while agent B is approaching door in room B. And the door in room A is close while the door in room is half-open.

63. For example, the string “10100101” doesn’t make sense. It means both A and B are in the center of their room while both of their doors are half open. The doors don’t need to half open (or open) since none of them want to meet.

64. For or more information please see Appendix-II 65. See Jefferson, David, et al. "The Genesys System: Evolution as a theme in artificial life." Proceedings of Second Conference on Artificial Life. 1992.

66. The jumping around is actually the result of both agent states

Fig. 19 Finite State Automata (FSA) is applied to model the behavior of corridors. The pattern switches between different states based on agent system

two agents are both approaching the door (which means they want to meet each other), both doors will open and the corridor will form a public space for them to have conversations; If one approaches the door (“the active agent”) while the other is staying at the center position (“the resting agent”), the door at the active agent’s side will be half open which allows the active agent to see through without passing through, while the door at the resting agent side will keep closed which helps to maintain the privacy for the resting agent; If one agents is approaching the door while the other room is empty, the door will open and let the only agent take over the whole space.

2.5 Encoded Representation of the Space The interactive rules above ensure a series of non-stop continuous actuations of the rooms in the field. The principle may sound simple and straightforward. However, it is actually quite complicated considering there are totally 81 states among which every single one either loops around or constantly jumps to another new state, and the agents which wander around in the field constantly update its own the states as well. The overall situation for one corridor is complex enough, not to mention the overall setup contains multiple corridors and rooms. In order to implement the interaction principles through programming, we need to encode the space variations into digital strings. Both door states and agents states contain 3 variations which can be defined with 2 digits using binary system61. The description of overall states contains 4 segments respectively, the agent states of room A, the agent states of room B, the door states of room A, the doors state of room B. So, the overall states of a corridor (two rooms) are defined by a string with 8 (2+2+2+2) digits62.

This bring a lot of convenience to us since it converts a hard to imagine spatial problem into a relatively clear permutation and combination problem. The 81 states (which are 81 strings already) are mathematically complete permutation situations, however not all of them make sense in real architecture scenario63. After a selection of architecturally meaningful states, 22 of 81 states are the real states for the possible spatial variations64. We used a mathematic model known as “Finite State Automata (FSA)65” to model the complex behavior in relatively simple program by thinking the overall scenario as a combination of different states among which each state constantly jumps from one to another (Fig. 19)66.

Based on this model, we wrote a simulation program on

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Processing67. A lookup table (.csv file) is imported to the program which contains all 22 encoded states and corresponding subsequent lookup item index (see Appendix-II). A time-based agent simulation program is created to activate the state changes and let the program run autonomously. The Processing simulation shows multiple spatial differentials which can not be imagined through conventional architecture design techniques. A physical model that contains 16 units of rooms are made to demonstrate the different patterns generated by the Processing simulation (Fig. 20). The rotation of the door is driven by servos controlled by an Arduino Mega68. Since it is very hard to physically build an agent system which contains autonomously wandering individuals, we decided to use the Processing simulation to control the physical demonstration of the model. The communication between Processing and Arduino is done with Firmata69 library.

2.6 Happy, Bored, Angry: Further Discussion of Autonomy What being discussed so far describes a detailed model which uses algorithm (in this case the FSA model) to give complexity based on limited physical memory of architecture. The achievements are basically about two areas: on one hand, it unpacks the meaning of architecture robotics from a unique perspective which focuses on both the sensory experience and social scenarios created by the new human-machine cohabitation. The focus on social implications is crucial to this project. On the other hand, in a more technical level, the project focuses on transferring the complexity from physical level (eg. The complexity of architectural setup, the complexity of mechanical linkage) to the complexity raised by algorithm and mathematic model. In this way, we are more capable of avoiding human errors in design and making the system being generated more autonomously.

Apart from these qualities, the project also shows other autonomous potentials. Even though the ideal scenario is the complete autonomy based on code and algorithm, the actual situation still contains the hybrids of computer’s speed and human intervention70. This isn’t against the autonomous argument of the project since the model contains a generative process - the human behavior (in this case is simulated with time-based agent system) pushes the states changes (implied by the physical setup) and the state change (result in physical space) pushes back to influence human behavior. Now the model can be described as a happy machine in which everything works perfectly just as designed – every time someone meets

change and door state actions. In the schematic diagram, the blue arrow means the subsequent string is caused by agent state change, this means the preceding state is a “stable” state and the subsequent state can be either “stable” or “unstable (transitional)”.

The red arrow means the subsequent string is caused by door state change action. This means the preceding state must be “unstable (transitional)” and the subsequent string is “stable”.

67. https://processing.org/ 68. https://www.arduino.cc/ 69. https://github.com/firmata/protocol

2.6 Happy, Bored, Angry: Further Discussion of Autonomy 70. Axel Kilian argues no fully autonomous design system exists to date that designers would consider using. And models need to be generative (perceive the contours of the problem) instead of merely working as metaphors. Kilian also argues that the architecture discipline needs to develop a deeper understanding of computation to implement novel models. See Killian, Axel.

“The Question of the Underlying Model and Its Impact on Design,” in Models: 306090, Volume 11, eds. E. Abruzzo, E. Ellingsen, and J. Solomon, 306090, Inc. 2007

Fig. 20 The physical implementation is controlled by the Processing simulation which shows different configurations based on the algorithm

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3. Clevis, Pivot and Springs 3.1 Two Types of Machines 71. The definition of “standard” and “non-standard” is based on how things were made, as outlines by Mario Carpo: “In its simples test definition, non-standard production means the serial reproduction of non-identical parts”. See M. Carpo, “tempest in a Teapot,” Log, no.6 (2005).

72. Architects have shown great interests in making “nonstandard” machines especially considering the fact the we are entering a post-human period in which technology is the driven force for both functional and aesthetic value. Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) designed a machine which can produce clean smoke rings (See https://www.dezeen.com/2011/01/27/waste-to-energyplant-by-big/). Studio Roosegaarde designed a machine which can eliminate smog (See https://www.studioroosegaarde.net/ project/smog-free-project/). These machines are different from what Archigram did in the 60s since the former showed value as functional as they are speculative, and they are not the same as using CNC machines either since they are all different and customized.

73. An industrial robot is a robot system used for manufacturing.

Industrial robots are automated, programmable and capable of movement on two or more axes. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Industrial_robot 74. See Bonwetsch, Tobias. Robotically assembled brickwork. Diss.

Dissertation, ETH-Zürich, 2015, Nr. 22731, 2015.

3.2 It’s about but (not all about) Endeffector 75. A lot of precedents have proved this. Surfacing Stone (led

by Prof. Monica Ponce de Leon, GSD, 2007) applied 6-axis robot to do water jet cutting of marble. (See http://www.gsd.harvard. edu/project/surfacing-stone/) ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion (2010) (led

by Prof. Achim Menges, University of Stutgart, 2010) used a robot as milling tool (See http://icd.uni-stuttgart.de/?p=4458). FabClay (Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC), 2012) applied the robot to do the additive manufacturing work similar to a 3D printer (See http://www.iaacblog.com/programs/fabbots-30-fab-clay/).

76. Projects that alter the conventional fabrication process are the interests of current research. Gravity-neutral 3D printing

the requirement of doing something, the machine will let this thing happen. However, the machine can also enter bored state – even if you meet the requirement of triggering something, the machine may not respond to you since it is bored; The machine can also become angry - it will override the existed principles and do its own things no matter how you interact with it.

Under autonomous thinking, architecture should have its own personality and the building is an equally important agent as human – the functional thinking of modernism no longer makes sense in these scenarios. What on the table right now is a new human-machine social cohabitation.

3. Clevis, Pivot and Springs 3.1 Two Different Types of Machines There are two types of machines - standard machines and nonstandard machines71. The computer numerically controlled (CNC) fabrication tools, such as routers, mills, or laser-cutters are standard machines. They are not intelligent devices though containing a series of complex physical execution. These machines have been adopted in the architecture realm over the last decades. On the contrary, architecture design and production are also obsessed with non-standard machines since they open up new possibilities which make a direct link between architectural objects and specific given objects72. Today, architects focus on another approach of machines, namely the industrial robots73. The commonly used 6-axis articulated arm robots, though containing complex control program, are not intelligent device either. They are also programmable machines with similarities to CNC – both of them show the universal qualities that can perform multiple jobs following similar procedures. However, the industrial robot has more freedom of being equipped with non-standard tools, commonly known as end-effector. This makes robotic fabrication different from CNC machine fabrication – the former focuses on the actual physical fabrication process while the latter focuses

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only on the control of movement74.

3.2 About (but not all about) EndEffector To some extent, the robotic fabrication is all about the endeffector. The non-standard process makes it possible for robotic fabrication to mimic multiple CNC-like manufacturing process75. However, the existence of end-effector makes robotic fabrication capable of going beyond this mimicking process and somehow alter the fabrication process76. One the other hand, the operationality of industrial robot brought new complexity to fabrication which is beyond the operationality of the endeffector. The working range of robot and limitations of joints are as important as the design of end-effector77. Recent researches and projects are likely to address this issue with the argument that robotics has its own significance toward fabrication instead of merely implementing a conventional process. Considering these two aspects, robotic fabrication actually requires more human complexity of design and designer’s capabilities are expanded through this emerging “operationality”78.

The following research, Robotic Manipulated 3D Printing based on Self-Supporting Structure (“Robotic 3D Printing”) (Fig. 21)79, took advantage of both the non-standard design of the end-effector and the operationality of the robot. It criticizes the current increasing donative definition of 3D printing. In recent years, architectural applications of 3D printing have become a fashion of design and industry80. However, it’s not convincing to name a thing “3D printing” merely based on the fact that it contains a material extrusion and additive manufacture process. As far as I understand, following things are crucial to 3D printing: More degrees of freedom (DOFs) during the formation process, relatively rapid and simple prototyping process, acceptable structural

Fig. 21 Robotic Manipulated 3D printing. A spatial self-standing structure is printed

(project also named Mataerial, developed by Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC) and Joris Laarman Studio, 2012) provides a way of printing along a spatial path instead of accumulating the material layer by layer. (See http://www. mataerial.com/) MX3D Metal Printing (by JORISLAARMANLAB, 2014) also provided a way of printing a spatial structure with metal welding technique. (See http://mx3d.com/projects/metal/) 77. The constraints of the robotic tools are integrated into the design process, and sometimes even become the predominant drivers. ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion (2015) (led by Prof. Achim Menges, University of Stutgart, 2015) included the range of robot as formfinding parameters (See http://icd.uni-stuttgart.de/?p=12965).

78. See Brell-Çokcan, Sigrid, and Johannes Braumann. "Rob/ Arch 2012: Robotic Fabrication in Architecture." Art and Design.

Springer (2012). “What is sometimes inconceivable in our current modes of thinking is that the robot-facilitated approach to comprehensive technological fabrication capability corresponds in no way to a devaluation of human complexity…At the meantime, human capabilities can be considerably expanded through the ‘operationality’ of the robot.”

79. Robotic 3D Printing was finished during Digital Shanghai 2014 summer workshop. Project led by Lei Yu (ASW), collaborated with Xun Liu and Ruihua Luo. 80. A lot of current researches showed so called 3D printed buildings. The “3D printed” residential house by Yingchuang Technology Company, shanghai showed an additive manufacturing process in a real building scale (Yuan, Philip F., et al. "Robotic Multi-dimensional Printing Based on Structural Performance." Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2016. Springer International Publishing, 2016. 92-105.). However, calling it 3D printing is not very accurate in technical level. Prof.

Behrokh Khoshnevis (USC) researched into similar areas. He refers

Fig. 22 Microscopic view showing the spindle-knot and joint structure of a spider thread (© Nature Publishing Group)

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kg 8mm

02mm

gm 48mm mm

mm 99mm kg 8mm

mm 59mm g8mm 02mm mm

the technology as “contour crafting” which to me is more accurate and objective. See Khoshnevis, Behrokh. "Contour crafting–a new rapid prototyping process." Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Rapid Prototyping. 1997.

3.3 New Printing Nozzle Inspired by Nature

performance. These three qualities are interlocking with each other and they are the starting point of this research.

3.3 New Printing Nozzle Inspired by Nature

The research aims to develop a new 3D printing strategy other than the generic fused deposition modeling (FDM) typology. The TYPE-A TYPE-B TYPE-C TYPE-D TYPE-E process as something TYPE-F more than the TYPE-G 81. See Gosline, John M., M. Edwin DeMont, and Mark W. Denny. key is to rethink the printing 360° 3 360° "The structure and properties of spider silk." Endeavour 10.1 (1986): linear extrusion of material. We found spider web very inspiring 120° 37-43. since each360° thread actually contains more complexity than its120° 2 240° 180° 240° 82. See Yuan, Philip F., et al. "Robotic Multi-dimensional simple look from macroscopic view. A spider thread is normally Printing Based on Structural Performance." Robotic Fabrication in made up of two parts, respectively spindle-knot and joint (Fig. 22). <Section Typology Illustration of Testing 3D Model> A-0 B-0 C-0 D-0 E-0 F-0 G-0 TYPE-B TYPE-C TYPE-D TYPE-E TYPE-F TYPE-G Architecture, Art and Design 2016.

Springer International Publishing, These two parts have different structure patterns which work 360° 2016. 92-105. together to guarantee the overall structure performance 360° of the 90° 360° 120° 83. Ibid. cobweb81. It’s proved that this sectional morphology makes the 120° 270° 180° 240° 360° 180° 240° 84. Autodesk Simulation mechanical is based on the method strength of thread four times stronger than that of steel in the known as Finite Element Analysis (FEA) (See http://www.autodesk. same diameter (about 1/10000 mm)82. This fact gave us the idea <Axonometrical Illustration <Section Typology Illustration of Testing 3D Model> of Testing 3D Model> com/products/simulation-mechanical/overview).

We of making the extrusion structure instead of G-1 B-0 C-0 D-0 E-0 F-0 A-1 B-1 C-1also did other D-1 E-1forming a 3D spatialG-0 F-1 tests by making physical multiple models and see which one a 2D linear structure. The additional sectional reinforcement will works better. The result of this is not quite informative to the compensate the bending moment of the linear structure and as discussion since making the “spindle-knot” and “joint” model by result brings better structure performance. The hypothesis is that G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg hand will largely compromise the structural property due to low if D=0.0041mm section morphology isD=0.0042mm chosen properly, theD=0.0031mm structure can stand D=0.0037mm D=0.0048mm D=0.0033mm D=0.0048mm <deformation simulation under gravitational effects> <Axonometrical Illustration of Testing 3D Model> resolution model making. See Appendix-III for more information freely and support its own weight.

A-2 B-2 C-2 D-2 E-2 F-2 G-2 B-1 C-1 D-1 E-1 F-1 G-1 TYPE-C TYPE-D TYPE-E TYPE-F TYPE-G TYPE-B TYPE-C TYPE-D TYPE-E TYPE-F TYPE-G about TYPE-A the analysis.

We extracted the microscopic morphology of the spindle360° 360° 90° 360° 120° 360° 3 85. Typology of double reinforcement at 90° & 270° is not knot and decided to add multiple sinusoidal-shape auxiliary 360° 120° 120° 270° 180° 240° 360° 180° included since the horizontal placement of auxiliary thread 240° thread along with the main thread (Fig. 23). In this way, the 120° 2 240° 360° 180° F=200N F=200N F=200N 240° G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg F=200N F=200Nthat the overall F=200N F=200Nsectional area is G=9.8N/kg doesn’tG=9.8N/kg increase the height of the structure, and it won’t help to overall increased, and we assume D=106.102mm D=86.156mm D=106.102mm D=0.0033mm D=0.0048mm D=0.0041mm D=0.0042mm D=0.0031mm D=0.0037mm D=43.167mm D=33.546mm D=50.334mm D=91.239mm simulation with external force / F=200 N> The area where auxiliary <deformation simulation under gravitational effects> <Section Typology Illustration of Testing 3D <deformation Model> improve the structural performance. structural performance will be improved.

A-3 B-3 C-3 D-3 Illustration of Testing E-3 3D Model> F-3 G-3 B-2 C-2 D-2 E-2 F-2 G-2 <Section Typology C-0 D-0 E-0 F-0 G-0 86. From Type-F is slightly inferior thread is in contact with the joint of the G-0 A-0 the result, thoughTYPE-C B-0 C-0 to type-G in D-0 E-0the main thread mimics F-0 TYPE-B TYPE-D TYPE-E TYPE-F TYPE-G 360° withstanding pressure under 40 N·m external torque. It is much spider thread, 360° threads 90° 360° while the place where the supplementary 120° 83 stronger than Type G in resisting vertical load, also Type F uses deviate from the main thread mimics the spindle-knot .

120° 270° 180° 240° 180° F=200N F=200N M=40 N·m M=40 N·m M=40 N·m 360° M=40 N·m are240° M=40 N·m that will influence M=40 N·m fewer auxiliary thread than Type G, potentially alleviating There multiple variables the structural M=40 N·m F=200N F=200N F=200N F=200N selfD=86.156mm D=106.102mm D=1133.48mm D=1133.48mm D=1106.54mm D=983.485mm D=43.167mm

D=50.334mm

B-3 A-4 C-1 B-0 A-1 TYPE-C

D=102.293mm D=33.546mm

simulation with external torque / M=40 N·m> <deformation simulation with external force / F=200 N> <Axonometrical Illustration of Testing 3D<deformation Model> C-3 D-3 E-3 F-3 B-4 C-4 Illustration D-4 3D E-43D Model> <Axonometrical Illustration <Section Typology of Testing Model> of Testing D-1 E-1 F-1 G-1 C-0 B-1 TYPE-D

D-0 C-1 TYPE-E

sinusoidal auxiliary thread

E-0 D-1 TYPE-F

360°

120°

F-0 E-1 TYPE-G

360° 120°

360°

90°

270°

180°

D=98.930mm D=91.239mm

G-3 F-4 G-0 F-1

240° 180° M=40 N·m M=40 N·m 360° 240° F=200N F=200N F=200N G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg M=40 N·m M=40 N·m M=40 N·m M=40 N·m F=200N F=200N F=200N D=1133.48mm D=1106.54mm D=129.899mm D=120.328mm D=129.899mm G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg D=0.0048mm D=0.0041mm D=0.0042mm D=0.0031mm D=0.0037mm D=43.201mm D=102.293mm D=98.930mm D=983.485mm D=86.394mm D=60.943mm D=70.834mm D=0.0048mm D=0.0033mm D=0.0048mm D=0.0041mm D=0.0042mm <different scale / deformation simulation external force / F=200D=0.0031mm N> <deformation simulation withmodel external torque / M=40 N·m> with <deformation simulation under gravitational effects> A-5 B-5 Illustration C-5 3D D-5 E-5 F-5 B-4 C-4 D-4 E-4 F-4 G-4 <deformation simulation under gravitational effects> <Axonometrical Illustration of Testing 3D Model> C-2 D-2 E-2 F-2 G-2 <Section Typology of Testing Model> A-2 B-2 C-2 D-2 E-2 F-2 C-0 D-0 E-0 F-0 G-0 B-1 C-1 D-1 E-1 F-1 G-1

D=43.201mm

G-4 G-1

F=200N G=9.8N/kg D=64.385mm D=0.0037mm G-5 G-2

main thread F=200N M=40 N·m F=200N F=200N D=106.102mm D=1861.59mm D=120.328mm G=9.8N/kg D=106.102mm D=0.0033mm

M=40 N·m M=40 N·m M=40 N·m M=40 N·m M=40 N·m F=200N F=200N F=200N F=200N F=200N F=200N F=200N F=200N F=200N F=200N F=200N D=1804.58mm D=1861.59mm D=1352.48mm D=847.48mm D=932.29mm D=129.899mm G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg D=64.385mm D=86.394mm D=60.943mm D=70.834mm F=200N F=200N F=200N D=43.167mm D=50.334mm D=33.546mm D=91.239mm D=86.156mm D=106.102mm D=0.0048mm D=0.0041mm D=0.0042mm <different scale model simulation withD=0.0031mm external torque / M=40D=0.0037mm N·m> <different scale model / deformation simulation with external force / F=200 N> <deformation simulation with external force / F=200 N>/ deformation D=43.167mm D=33.546mm D=50.334mm C-5 Illustration D-5 E-5 F-5 G-5 <deformation simulation with externalG-3 force / F=200 N> D-3 E-3 F-3 <deformation simulation under gravitational <Axonometrical of Testing 3D Model> Fig. 24 effects> B-3 C-3 D-3 E-3 F-3 C-2 D-2 E-2 F-2 G-2 D-1 E-1 F-1 G-1

B-5 Fig. 23 C-3 A-3 B-2 C-1 The idea of using sinusoidal auxiliary thread as structural reinforcement is inspired by the spider thread

Structural Analysis of Type-F

M=40 M=40N·m N·m M=40 N·m M=40N·m N·m M=40N·m M=40N·m N·m M=40 M=40 M=40 Manipulation !N·m 17 F=200N F=200N M=40 N·m M=40 N·m M=40 Critical N·m D=1106.54mm D=1804.58mm D=1861.59mm D=1352.48mm D=847.48mm D=932.29mm G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg G=9.8N/kg M=40 N·m M=40 N·m D=102.293mm D=983.485mm D=98.930mm D=43.201mm F=200N F=200N F=200N D=86.156mm D=106.102mm D=1133.48mm D=1133.48mm D=1106.54mm D=0.0048mm D=0.0041mm D=0.0042mm D=102.293mm D=983.485mm <different scale model / deformation simulation external torque / M=40D=0.0037mm N·m> <deformation simulation with external torque / M=40 N·m> withD=0.0031mm D=50.334mm D=43.167mm D=33.546mm simulation with external torque / M=40 N·m> <deformation simulation with external force / F=200 N> C-4 D-4 E-4 <deformation F-4 G-4 <deformation simulation under gravitational effects>

M=40 N·m D=784.39mm M=40 N·m F=200N D=98.930mm D=91.239mm

M=40 N·m D=784.39mm F=200N D=91.239mm G-3

M=40 N·m D=43.201mm

performance, respectively the number of auxiliary threads, the relative positions of auxiliary threads, the dimension of the sinusoidal shape. In order to figure this out, we did a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) in Autodesk Simulation Mechanical (Fig. 24)84. The typologies are set as following: Type-A: linear (un-reinforced); Type-B: single reinforcement at 180°; Type-C: single reinforcement at 0°; Type-D: double reinforcement at 0° & 180°85; Type-E: triple reinforcement at 0°, 120° & 240°; Type-F: triple reinforcement at 60°, 180° & 300°; Type-G: quadruple reinforcement at 0°, 90°, 180° & 270°. Two simulations were created: a point load of 200N vertical force and 40 N·m external torque. By comparing the deformation (deflection and buckling) of Type-A (linear unreinforced type) with deformation of Type B-G, as well as comparing the material consumption, we can conclude that Type F (triple reinforcement at 60°, 180° & 300°) is relatively better than other typologies86.

weight and simplifying the design of the printing device. See Yuan, Philip F., et al. "Robotic Multi-dimensional Printing Based on Structural Performance." Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2016. Springer International Publishing, 2016. 92-105.

3.4 Machine to Machine Station

We designed an end-effector87 (see Appendix-III) to implement the optimized sectional typology (Fig. 25). It’s intuitive to draw a rough sketch of the end-effector - one fixed printing nozzle in the center and three pivoting printing nozzles around. The key is to design a mechanical system that controls the motion of these nozzles. We decided to use only one stepper motor to drive the system while using a set of linkage systems to coordinate the motion of all three pivoting nozzles88.

The final end-effector design is done after several iterations.

The core component of the system is a hexagonal turn plate89 with petaloid fillet comers slightly sticking out of the main part (Fig. 26). The outer boundary of this sophisticated shape traces a sinusoidal curve. The turn plate is linked to a stepper motor sit on its back through an embedded gear system. Each auxiliary nozzles sits on a pivot which has direct physical contact with the turn

87. The design of the end-effector was largely done by Lei Yu. The first prototype was completely done by him and studio ASW. The final design was improved after several iterations done by the author and team. The final iteration was fabricated in Tongji University College of Architecture and Urban planning.

88. Using linkage system is better than driving 3 pivoting nozzles separately using multiple stepper motors. The three auxiliary threads are topologically symmetrical about the center thread which requires high consistency when they are working. Using multiple stepper motors will cause desynchronization and deviation. (See Yuan, Philip F., et al. "Robotic Multi-dimensional Printing Based on Structural Performance." Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2016. Springer International Publishing, 2016. 92-105.) We actually did another iterations of design which contains 4 synchronizing oscillating printing nozzles.

89. We first used common FDM 3D printer to produce the central turn plate and we found this didn’t work at all because the temperature in between the 4 printing nozzles are too high. The final iteration was prototyped using a Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) 3D printer since it allow us iterating it fast and the material can withstand higher temperature. (See Appendix-III) 90. In this case, we used ABS material with a diameter of 1.75mm. The printing temperature is 235°C. The 4 printing nozzles are controlled with Arduino Mega 2560, driving by stepper motors with driver A4988. See Yuan, Philip F., et al. "Robotic Multi-dimensional Printing Based on Structural Performance."

Fig. 25 A non-standard end-effector is designed to implement the concept

Fig. 26 The core component of the end-effector is a hexagonal turn plate

3.4 Machine to Work Station

Critical Manipulation !

18

Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2016. Springer International Publishing, 2016. 92-105.

91. In the experiment, the control of the air compressor was done manually. Actually we can make this part run autonomously by using valves (e.g. 12V DC solenoid valve) to separate the air, and connecting the valve with the Arduino code of the printer.

92. https://www.kuka.com/en-us/products/robotics-systems/ industrial-robots/kr-agilus-sixx 93. See section 3.5.

3.5 More (non-standard) DOFs 94. KUKA|Prc (developed by Association for Robots in Architecture) builds upon Grasshopper on Rhino 3D. It provides the robotic building blocks to directly integrate a KUKA robot into a parametric environment. http://www.robotsinarchitecture.org/ kuka-prc 95. Normally, the 3 outer nozzles are “closed” which means they touch each other at one single point. If we let go of the material of all 4 nozzles without starting the oscillation motion, the material will be extruded together to one point and jams the nozzle. Similarly, if we make the motion of the nozzles too fast, the threads may have problems in sticking together.

plate. When the whole system works, the rotation of the turn plate pushes the pivot back and forth (the pivots have spring mass to push back). This oscillation pattern is associated with the shape of the turn plate. In this way, the pivots work as angel switches which can be controlled to open and close (Fig. 27). If we “unroll” this oscillation through time, the trace of the nozzle will show the sinusoidal pattern.

The nozzles use standard 3D printer conponent which contains heating module and temperature sensor inside90. Since there are four printing nozzles placed in a very close position, the commonly used cooling typology are neither capable of efficiently cooling the whole system down nor being able to fit in the relatively small space. So, we applied an air compressor to provide compressed air from an external source and used tubbing and fittings to guide the air towards right position91. All the material delivering systems apply same principles used in conventional 3D printers, but they are integrated in a compact external station with LED screens allowing people to control different variables (Fig. 28)(See Appendix-III). The non-standard end-effector was carried by a KUKA KR6 R900 sixx robot92. We setup the robot inside an aluminum framework which helps to stabilize the robot. This framework represents the intention of integrating all machines into a work station which provides designers with unique design experience93.

3.5 More (non-standard) DOFs We wrote several spatial curves to test the quality of printing.

The toolpath was generated using KUKA|prc94 on Grasshopper platform. As the first prototype, we controlled most variables manually. The work-flow goes as follows: we manually set the printing temperature and pre-heats the nozzles. And then we switch on both extrusion steppers and air compressor, and

Close

Open

Fig. 27 The outer 3 nozzle can open and close based on the rotation of the central turn plate

Fig. 28 The control circuit of the printer is integrated into a external station. See Appendix-II for more information

Critical Manipulation !

19

now the nozzles on the end-effector starts printing out the material; Meanwhile we need to quickly switch on the rotation of the central turn plate before the material jams the nozzle95; And after making sure every step is done correctly, we can run our code (.src) of robot. After several iterations of the test, we found this process implying much more degrees of freedom (DOFs) than we though. The speed of the robot influences the shape of the section in a large degree. For example, if we want to print a “S” shape structure, we better slow down the robot when it approaches two turning points. The slow printing speed makes the sectional oscillation denser near this point and better structural performance is created. The cooling air is also a crucial issue, the pressure of the air compressor and the distance between the air nozzle to the printing nozzle are very critical things. The ideal situation is the printed structure being “frozen” once they go out of the nozzle. In practice, the weight of the printed segment influences the preceding printing as well.

Imagine we are printing a “U” shape, the more we go to the end, the more dragging force there will be and this influences the printing quality.

If we consider the common concept of degrees of freedom (DOF), the KUKA KR6 R900 sixx has 6 DOFs already. Different Number of printing nozzles (the nozzles can be switched off separately) provides another 4 DOFs. The rotation speed of the central turn plate (the motion of the linkage system) is another DOF. The cooling air condition also provides a DOF as well. So technically speaking, there are totally 12 DOFs of this system. I’m not arguing the more DOFs , the happier we are. But it worth knowing that apart from the existing 6 DOFs of the industrial robot, we have equally valuable space to design with. The real potential of robotic fabrication appears once we open up this non-standard area.

3.6 A Functional and Performative Machine!

96. See Yu, Lei. “Intersection or Complementation – Robotic Technology in Autonomy of Digital Tectonics.” Architectural Journal.

8(2014). 31-2.

97. I’m not avoiding the responsibility of doing rigorous documentations. The final printing results were actually carefully documented and analyzed. The printing quality is highly associate with the pre-designed curve. The low-sloping curve has a larger overall deflection. The high-sloping cure has smaller overall deflection but the weight of structure also makes the “spindleknot” joint deform.

3.6 A Functional and Performative Machine!

Apart from creating a novel approach of self-standing spatial 3D printing, another equally important quality of this research is that the integrated robot station is as performative and representational as they are functional (Fig. 29). We want to show the personality of the machine96, for example, the machine requires people to run around switching on/off different switches, the different color of printed material in relation with different printing patterns, etc. Our machine doesn’t want to be universal, like a new factory technique that can be quickly adapted to multiple designs. Factory process is supposed to be hidden - it’s

Fig. 29 Both of the printed material and the printing process is performative and unique

Critical Manipulation !

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generic and predictable. The printing process in our machine is supposed to be exposed â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it works as a clue telling people that the manufacturing process can be altered, what used to be considered as rigid and boring actually can be done through a more recreational and performative way.

What we presented at the final review was several live demonstrations of printing process (Fig. 30)97. We think the meaning of the machine itself is as important as what it can produce.

The machine here is like a novel work station - it neither falls into the trap of conventional factories which are separated from designers and placed far away, nor works as highly un-hackable 3D printers that are placed just next to designers but provides limited accesses. This station shows an integration of design and fabrication process in which the idea can be implemented through a programmable and visible process.

4. Conclusion These three projects represent different research directions.

They even go against each other â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Robotic Crystal Growth (2016) argues the complexity should be placed at algorithmic level while Robotic 3D Printing (2014) claims the complexity of a real sophisticated machine is a lot more than we thought. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t see this as deviations or divergences. Actually, I considered this as my consistent pursuit of being critical in the field of digital since in both cases, robots are not merely applied to solve superficial problems but used as a methodology to critique, speculate and generate a relatively new realm. The meaning of Critical Manipulation is dual folded: We are entering a critical period (transition point between two states), in which technology gains its significance and becomes a primary driven force for architecture. And at this point, we need to be critical (capable of judging) since this driving forces are as social, cutural, political as they are technological.

The manipulation of Robots needs to be critical.

Fig. 30 Robotic 3D Printing presented during the exhibition

Critical Manipulation !

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16. Kilian, Axel. “The Question of the Underlying Model and Its Impact on Design,” in Models: 306090, Volume 11, eds. E. Abruzzo, E. Ellingsen, and J. Solomon, 306090, Inc. 2007 17. Kohler, Matthias. The Robotic Touch: How Robots Change Architecture. Park books, 2014.

18. Lockton, Dan. "Architecture, urbanism, design and behaviour: a brief review'." Design with Intent Blog (2011).

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22. Pallasmaa, Juhani. The eyes of the skin: architecture and the senses. John Wiley & Sons, 2012.

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Springer International Publishing, 2016. 16-31.

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26. Semper, Gottfried, Harry Francis Mallgrave, and Michael Robinson. Style in the technical and tectonic arts, or, Practical aesthetics. Getty Publications, 2004.

27. T. Yoshida et al., “Development of spray robot for fireproof cover work” (paper presented at the 1st International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (ISARC), Pittsburgh, USA, 1984) 28. Van Campen, Cretien. The hidden sense: Synesthesia in art and science. Mit Press, 2010.

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Appendix - I Mathematically complete Permutation (81 states) Sensor: "00"=Neither Center nor Door sensor activated; "10"=Center Activated; "01"=Door Activated; Door: "100"=Close; "010"= Half Open Half Close; "001"=Open ID DESCRIPTION PRE-ID Encoded String AFT-ID SensorA SensorB RoomA RoomB 1 00 00 00 00 00000000 1 2 00 00 00 01 00000001 3 00 00 00 10 00000010 4 00 00 01 00 00000100 5 00 00 01 01 00000101 6 00 00 01 10 00000110 7 00 00 10 00 00001000 8 00 00 10 01 00001001 9 00 00 10 10 00001010 10 00 10 00 00 00100000 10 11 00 10 00 01 00100001 12 00 10 00 10 00100010 13 00 10 01 00 00100100 14 00 10 01 01 00100101 15 00 10 01 10 00100110 16 00 10 10 00 00101000 17 00 10 10 01 00101001 18 00 10 10 10 00101010 10 19 00 01 00 00 00010000 27 20 00 01 00 01 00010001 21 00 01 00 10 00010010 22 00 01 01 00 00010100 23 00 01 01 01 00010101 24 00 01 01 10 00010110 25 00 01 10 00 00011000 26 00 01 10 01 00011001 27 00 01 10 10 00011010 27 28 10 00 00 00 10000000 28 29 10 00 00 01 10000001 30 10 00 00 10 10000010 31 10 00 01 00 10000100 32 10 00 01 01 10000101 33 10 00 01 10 10000110 34 10 00 10 00 10001000 35 10 00 10 01 10001001 36 10 00 10 10 10001010 28 37 10 10 00 00 10100000 37 38 10 10 00 01 10100001 37 39 10 10 00 10 10100010 40 10 10 01 00 10100100 37 41 10 10 01 01 10100101 42 10 10 01 10 10100110 43 10 10 10 00 10101000 44 10 10 10 01 10101001 45 10 10 10 10 10101010 46 10 01 00 00 10010000 47 47 10 01 00 01 10010001 47 48 10 01 00 10 10010010 49 10 01 01 00 10010100 50 10 01 01 01 10010101 51 10 01 01 10 10010110 52 10 01 10 00 10011000 53 10 01 10 01 10011001 54 10 01 10 10 10011010 47 55 01 00 00 00 01000000 63 56 01 00 00 01 01000001 57 01 00 00 10 01000010 58 01 00 01 00 01000100 59 01 00 01 01 01000101 60 01 00 01 10 01000110 61 01 00 10 00 01001000 62 01 00 10 01 01001001 63 01 00 10 10 01001010 63 64 01 10 00 00 01100000 67 65 01 10 00 01 01100001 66 01 10 00 10 01100010 67 01 10 01 00 01100100 67 68 01 10 01 01 01100101 69 01 10 01 10 01100110 70 01 10 10 00 01101000 71 01 10 10 01 01101001 72 01 10 10 10 01101010 67 73 01 01 00 00 01010000 81 74 01 01 00 01 01010001 81 75 01 01 00 10 01010010 76 01 01 01 00 01010100 81 77 01 01 01 01 01010101 78 01 01 01 10 01010110 79 01 01 10 00 01011000 80 01 01 10 01 01011001 81 01 01 10 10 01011010 81

*

*

Not all permutations make sense, some of them are ruled out due to the architectural interaction scenarios.

For example, the string “10100101” doesn’t make sense. It means both A and B are in the center of their room while both of their doors are half open.

The doors don’t need to half open (or open) since none of them want to meet.

Architecturally meaningful Permutation (22 states) Sensor: "00"=Neither Center nor Door sensor activated; "10"=Center Activated; "01"=Door Activated; Door: "100"=Close; "010"= Half Open Half Close; "001"=Open OLD-PRE-ID NEW-PRE-ID 1 10 18 19 27 28 36 37 38 40 46 47 54 55 63 64 67 72 73 74 76 81

Encoded String

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

00000000 00100000 00101010 00010000 00011010 10000000 10001010 10100000 10100001 10100100 10010000 10010001 10011010 01000000 01001010 01100000 01100100 01101010 01010000 01010001 01010100 01011010

*

*

NEW-AFT-ID OLD-AFT-ID 0 1 1 4 4 5 5 7 7 7 11 11 11 14 14 16 16 16 21 21 21 21

1 10 10 27 27 28 28 37 37 37 47 47 47 63 63 67 67 67 81 81 81 81

the string “10010001”, for example, should be comprehend as “10(agent state of room A) - 01(agent state of room A) - 00(agent state of room A) - 01(agent state of room A)”, which means agent A is staying at the center of room A while agent B is approaching door in room B. And the door in room A is close while the door in room is half-open.

Appendix - II

ROBOT & END EFFECTOR 1.1 ABB IRB-7600-400 Robotic Manipulator (Courtesy of Princeton SoA Lab) 1.2 Adapter for Robotic End Effector (Courtesy of Princeton SoA Lab) * End effector was mounted with double 40mm t-Slot Track.

1.3 End Effector (Material : 1/8’’ transparent plexi) * A mobile platform for crystal growth.

1.4 Metal Mesh on the platform (Material: iron) *Metal mesh provided more friction for crystal structure to attach.

1.5 Origin Point of End Effector (Central point of the platform) *This point was measured by robot and reentered to the program *Tool data absolute coordinates [96.81, 32.55, 604.56] (Exp. Jan.22 2016) CHEMICAL REACTOR 2.1 300mm*300mm*300mm Solution Container (Material: 1/8’’ transparent plexi) 2.2 78000 ml Sodium Silicate Solution (Water : Sodium Silicate = 4:1) 2.3 Solution Level Height: 260mm (Relatively to the work object coordinates system) 2.4 Chemicals Dropping Point

2.5 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10

*Dropping point work object coordinates [100,150,260] Work Object Coordinate System Origin (XYZ Vector as showed) *Absolute coordinates of this origin [-1374.60,915.50,559.50] (Exp. Jan.22 2016) EXTERNAL MATERIAL DROPPER (Showed in Fig. Detail) Central Control Circuit and Battery *Arduino UNO R3 + 1602 LCD Screen + Breadboard + 4 AA Batteries Material Dropping Control Panel *Potentiometer + Press Button + 2 9V Batteries Solenoid Push & Pull Motor 1st Material Funnel (Material: Plastic) Bendable Connection Pipe (Material: Plastic) Small Cantilever Piece as a Spring (Material: 1/8’’ MDF) 2nd Material Funnel (Material: PVC) 3rd Material Funnel (Material: Paper) Base, Frame & Support of the External System (Material: 1/4’’ MDF) Support of the system (Height Adjustable)

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5

DOCUMENTATION Front Light with a Studio Light (Courtesy of Princeton SoA) Nikon D300s Camera to Take Images of the Fabrication Back Light with a Studio Light (Courtesy of Princeton SoA) Frame of Backdrop (Material: 30mm t-Slot Track) Backdrop Cloth (Material: Cloth. Color: Black) WORKING AND MAINTENANCE Selected Chemicals of the Experiment *Chemicals including xxx. Purchased from xxx Water Pipe for Purifying the Solution after Experiment Wasted Solution Container Clean Water Bucket Other Tools Used in the Experiment Table (Work Object Base)

Appendix - III

Nozzles angle 1: Open

Nozzles angle 2: Close