Higher Order - Material Feedback in Robotic Extrusion

This work investigates possibilities of integrating physical environment into digital by allowing for deviations originating from varying material properties to gradually inform a custom fabrication strategy.

Current material practices in architecture invest immense efforts in exploring new materials and determining their behaviour. Nevertheless the way of manipulating them remains unchanged, imposing materials a given shape rather than triggering its spontaneous behaviour. This results primarily from the division between design and fabrication processes. Decisions concerning the manufacturing are taken in advance and the fabrication is a mere execution of machine instructions, requiring that materials perform in a predictable fashion. However processes could be responsive and adapt to different conditions and react to changes.

The presented work examines the potentiality of robotic fabrication based on additive manufacturing for iterative material aggregation informed by physical material behaviour. In a series of case studies material feedback proved crucial not only for correcting tool-paths and thus compensating for deviations but it enables a more general approach to materiality and formation processes.

A plastic extrusion head deposits material in 3D space guided by a 6-axis industrial robot that is been remotely controlled. This setup has been extended by additional devices inputting information from the physical environment to the external control system. Due to the unpredictable material behaviour feedback - position of structure parts in space - from the deposited layer has been introduced to the process defining the subsequent tool paths for the robotic end effector and hence the areas of material accumulation. This facilitates the customisation of a robotically controlled additive manufacturing where the design is not predefined and a result of automated fabrication, but the material is affecting the robotic tool-paths and thus participating in the genesis of form.