Workshop #1 – Ways of Robust Automation

Many hope that further automation of manufacturing, prefabrication, construction, and assembly will relieve the burden on employees, counter the shortage of skilled labor and increase productivity. At the same time, many questions remain to be clarified: What are the organizational requirements, necessary competencies, suitable interfaces to fulfill these hopes? How can robust and trustworthy systems be designed that sustainably provide secure and safe functions? Which formats of human, machine and hybrid control stand the test of time? And how do they have to be created in order to enable job satisfaction and to promote learning? In the autumn school, we explore these questions from different perspectives and invite PhD students to present research use cases, exchange observations, and jointly deepen theoretical, methodological, and empirical findings.

Workshop #2 – Instructive Human Robot Collaboration and Multi-Actor task sharing in timber prefabrication

Extend the knowledge and introduce novel approaches of human-robot collaboration and workflow management with several humans and machines in the prefabrication environment.
AR and HRC have gained importance in the AEC environment recently. AR has been used to extend human crafts skill set with the provision of instructions like workpiece location or the assembly sequence, enabling them to execute tasks reliably and without any printed-out plan. Special sensitive low-payload robots, so called cobots have been introduced to support HRC in collaborative assembly tasks.

Our research proposes a novel concept to integrate human craft and high payload automation technology (e.g. industrial robots) as collaborative actors and create a highly adaptive prefabrication setup, suitable for the demands of project-based building elements production in the AEC environment.
Two important aspects will be discussed. The use of Head mounted AR-Devices to extend the humans skills set, establishes the communication between all actors and coordinate the fabrication workflow on the one hand and the task distribution via a smart server, based on the individual skill set of all actors.
After a quick introduction of the concept, hardware and software, the participants will gain some hands-on experience in a case study, where they will using the devices to collaboratively fabricate a timber object, followed by a discussion between participants and instructors.

Please note:

Notebooks should be brought by the WS participants.

Workshop #3 – From point cloud to materialized point structure. Creation of 3D printed ceramic objects designed via manipulation of 3D pointclouds encoded as 2D images

In the course of this workshop participants will be able to join the showcase of a production workflow containing: 1) generating 3D pointclouds from scanning, 2) encoding 3D pointclouds to 2D pixel images 3) manipulating 2D images via photoshop etc. 4) decoding 2D images into 3D targets for a 3D printer 5) materializing the designs via additive manufacturing methods for clay in situ.

Workshop #4 – Freely shaped reinforced concrete design

In the workshop, the fundamentals for an optimization aided design of reinforced concrete (RC) structures will be taught. Using material-biased topology optimization, which include basic material properties of concrete and reinforcement, lightweight designs of freely shaped RC beams are developed. Subsequently, the designs are evaluated with respect to their embodied energy and implemented as small-scale real demonstrators. The demonstrators will be presented and tested for their load-bearing capacity.

Workshop #5 – Botanical and mathematical principles for inspiring design of carbon fibre reinforced concrete

The workshop’s objective is to give an overview of an interdisciplinary process of inspiration for novel concrete structures reinforced with carbon (textiles).
The target is to find new methods for designing structures with highly reduced material use. In the workshop, leaf-stemp-connections and stemp-root-connections are taken a closer look at to give an understanding on their bearing principles. Next, the idea of considering mathematical symmetry principles to create three-dimensional assemblies of basic objects with high stability due to geometrical interlocking. Finally, a roadmap is presented regarding the adoption of interdisciplinary inspiration (here: botany and mathematics) into concrete construction to open up a novel principle of design.
The workshop is three-fold. Each session comprises an introduction part followed by a practical part. The practical part includes microscopic investigations, programming, geometry folding and passing around small demonstrators.

11:30 – 13:00: Reinforcement Structures in Plants

Plant features can serve as inspiration for a multitude of applications. The basic methods to investigate their inner structure by light microscopy will be carried out. Peltate leaves and aerial roots will be evaluated in regard to their distinct fiber arrangement in the junction.

14:00 – 15:30: Symmetry Principles as Inspiration for Structures

In this workshop we will explore ways to employ symmetries to generate geometric building blocks which can be assembled in such a way that they are kinematically restrained by a frame. Participants will be introduced to planar symmetries and will generate their own 3D building blocks by this principle. They will visualize and analyse the resulting assemblies on a computer.
No familiarity with the underlying algebraic concepts is required.

16:00 – 17:30: Generative Design in Textile Reinforced Concrete Structures

In nature, shell structures can be found in diverse variations. Compared to beams, where the bending stress increases disproportionately due to its weight, shell structures can handle significantly larger spans with minimal material expenditure. A similar performance can be reached in thin-walled structures made of textile reinforced concrete (TRC). The workshop is focused on the execution of the prelaminar generative search of the TRC structures based on predefined mathematical patterns using the programming environment of Grasshopper 3D software in combination with Karamba 3D as a FEM tool. Further, the achieved results should be precisely analysed considering the structural boundaries of the TRC material.

Workshop #6 – Additive Manufacturing in Construction: In situ Retrofitting Using AM with Mobile Robots

In this workshop we aim to experimentally explore whether the deployment of mobile robots on building sites could be utilized for retrofitting, customized renovation, or repair by applying in situ extrusion 3D printing technology. For this, we will set up a testing scenario, in which parts of an incomplete – unfinished or broken – building component will be completed by utilizing the AM technology of in-place extrusion 3D printing. A mobile robot will be equipped with an onboard sensing system to recognize the geometric shape of such an incomplete component, and a geometry will be generated based on the sensor data, which will be in-place printed by the robot.

The workshop will include the following blocks:

• Block 1 (Theory): Introduction of mobile construction robotics and basics of sensing and context awareness
• Block 2 (Practical Experiment): Sensing, data processing, and geometry generation
• Block 3 (Practical Experiment): Design studies and path planning
• Block 4 (Practical Experiment): 3D printing
• Block 5 (Results and Discussion): Reflection on the results and learned topics

On behalf of practical experiments, participants will get insights on basic concepts of mobile construction robotics, on basics of sensing and context awareness, on specific workflows for extrusion 3d printing, and on adaptive design-to-fabrication workflows

Please note:

Prior knowledge to Rhino/Grasshopper is of advantage but not required.

Workshop #7 – participation in the Conference „Adaptive Skins and Structures for the Built Environment of Tomorrow“

The Conference „Adaptive Skins and Structures for the Built Environment of Tomorrow“ provides insights into the works of the Collaborative Research Centre 1244 with a focus on the world’s first adaptive high-rise building!
The challenge is to create emission-free buildings for more people in the future with significantly less material. Beyond this, insights from research on adaptivity reveal new perspectives – for a sustainable transformation of the AEC field.

Workshop #8 – COMPAS – A framework for computational research in architecture and structures

Digital Fabrication in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry, requires the combination of various toolchains and software platforms, across the boundaries of multiple scientific (, socio-economic) and technological domains, into efficient pipelines for integrated computational development and project delivery. Over the past 6 years, the NCCR Digital Fabrication at ETH Zurich has greatly invested in the development of COMPAS, a comprehensive open-source computational framework written in Python, that aims at streamlining these multi-disciplinary workflows and the integration of state-of-the-art tooling to simplify their adoption by architects, designers and researchers from within parametric design environments.

In this 1-day workshop, Tom Van Mele and Lotte (Aldinger) Scheder-Bieschin of Block Research Group and Gonzalo Casas of Gramazio Kohler Research will introduce participants to COMPAS by providing an overview of the functionality of the core framework, the extension packages, the UI system, and its relation to CAD software. Together with the participants they will then step-by-step explore an example application focused on the modelling, equilibrium analysis, and robotic fabrication of a discrete assembly.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Use the geometry kernel and core data structures of COMPAS.
• Exchange data between different processes, plugins and tools.
• Design a simple discrete element model, identify the interfaces between the blocks, and manage block interactions with a specialised data structure.
• Calculate the required conditions for equilibrium.
• Analyse and explain the kinematic structure of a robot model (Links, Joints, Joint Types, URDF description format).
• Describe and discuss building blocks of robotics (forward and inverse kinematics, cartesian and kinematic planning, planning scene).
• Apply building blocks of robotics to plan stereotypical assembly processes (e.g. brick laying) in a simulation context.

Please note:

All participants:

• must bring their own computer
• should review the COMPAS information at https://compas.dev/index.html
• should review the tutorial at: https://compas.dev/compas/latest/tutorial.html

Workshop #9 – ml meets aec / machine learning meets architecture, engineering and construction

Objectives:
1. To find matching points between participants’ ongoing research.
2. To explore ML methods that can solve integrative computational design and construction challenges.
3. To increase the synergy between students from different disciplines

In a hackathon fashioned style, we will match integrative computational design challenges with state-of-the-art machine learning (ML) methods. The workshop focuses on developing conceptual applications of ML within the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industry. The workshop is open to master students, PhDs, and Postdocs, however, to achieve competent results we request half of the participants to be IMPRS-IS students or otherwise have an ML background.
The workshop is divided into 4 sessions each consisting of 1hour and 30 minutes.

• (1) The first session covers the introduction of the workshop and participants. All participating researchers present their research in a PechaKucha format. This storytelling format assists in finding common interests and clustering participants in groups according to their matching research questions and potentially applicable methods. Groups consist of 3-4 participants. Each group will have a minimum of one student from IMPRS-IS, the doctorate school of Cyber Valley, and one from IntCDC.
• (2) The second session targets idea generation, where groups will work together to find ways to solve AEC problems with ML methods. The session will be mentored by workshop instructors.
• (3) In the third part of the workshop, groups will develop their ideas further. It is expected that each group comes up with a conceptual idea/ AEC challenge and an ML model/method that can tackle this issue.
• (4) In the last session of the workshop, participants present their ideas to the jury panel. Workshop participants, leaders and the jury will grade the work, and as an award workshop themed T-shirts will be given to the best team members.

Please note:

All participants:

• the workshop is open to master students, phds, and postdocs, however, to achieve competent results we request half of the participants to be imprs-is students or otherwise have an ml background.
• All participants have to prepare a pecha kucha style presentation about their research
• all participants should bring their own laptop
• You can also register by sending an email to diellza.elshani@icd.uni-stuttgart.de.
  Please indicate your affiliation and current field of study in your email.