The RMIT Architectural Robotics Lab is an applied research group that explores the application and implications of robotics to architectural design, building fabrication, assembly and construction. The lab operates to develop both speculative research and the application of that research to industry projects. The lab is situated within RMIT University's d___Lab and operates from the Design Hub.
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RMIT Architectural Robotics Lab
MADLAB.CC is a design collective exploring computational approaches to architecture, craft, and interaction. Our work merges disciplinary knowledge from architecture, robotics, computer science, human-computer interaction, and design to explore the edges of digital creativity.
Robo.Op is an open hardware / open software platform for hacking industrial robots (IRs). Robo.Op makes it cheaper and easier to customize your IR for creative use, so you can explore the fringes of industrial robotics. The toolkit is made up of a modular physical prototyping platform, a simplified software interface, and a centralized hub for sharing knowledge, tools, and code.
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MADLAB.CC
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Robo.Op
The Flying Machine Arena (FMA) is a portable space devoted to autonomous flight. Measuring up to 10 x 10 x 10 meters, it consists of a high-precision motion capture system, a wireless communication network, and custom software executing sophisticated algorithms for estimation and control.
The motion capture system can locate multiple objects in the space at rates exceeding 200 frames per second. While this may seem extremely fast, the objects in the space can move at speeds in excess of 10 m/s, resulting in displacements of over 5 cm between successive snapshots. This information is fused with other data and models of the system dynamics to predict the state of the objects into the future.
The system uses this knowledge to determine what commands the vehicles should execute next to achieve their desired behavior, such as performing high-speed flips, balancing objects, building structures, or engaging in a game of paddle-ball. Then, via wireless links, the system sends the commands to the vehicles, which execute them with the aid of on-board computers and sensors such as rate gyros and accelerometers.
Although various objects can fly in the FMA, the machine of choice is the quadrocopter due to its agility, its mechanical simplicity and robustness, and its ability to hover. Furthermore, the quadrocopter is a great platform for research in adaptation and learning: it has well understood, low order first-principle models near hover, but is difficult to characterize when performing high-speed maneuvers due to complex aerodynamic effects. We cope with the difficult to model effects with algorithms that use first-principle models to roughly determine what a vehicle should do to perform a given task, and then learn and adapt based on flight data.
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FMA
The Materials, Processes, and Systems (MaPS) Group, lead by Professor Martin Bechthold, is a research unit that promotes the understanding, development and deployment of innovative technologies for buildings. The group evolved from the previously established Design Robotics Group, and is located in a research cluster at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. MaPS looks at materiality as starting points for design research, with a special interest in robotic and computer-numerically controlled (CNC) fabrication processes as well as small scale work on nano-materials. Much of our current work studies ceramic material systems and design robotics. MaPS also runs the Adaptive Living Environments (ALivE) project jointly with Harvards REAL group. ALivE develops novel applications for nano-scale material systems developed jointly with scientists from the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.
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MaP+S
