Robotic Wood Craft - Performative Producers in Architecture and Design

Industrial robots are fascinating architects, artists, and designers due to their complex kinematics and fluid, close to humanlike motion, but they are still not yet relevant tools in the design to production process. In the scope of this fundamental research we aim to investigate approaches that allow designers, artists, and architects to appropriate industrial robots as intuitive design tools. We will research how architects and designers can virtually and physically interact with robots, allowing immediate relationship between design and motion as an output, and how the robots` inherent multifunctionality can be applied in an arts-based context, especially in relation to wood. Similar to the multifunctional robots, wood is an especially diverse material that can perform a wide range of tasks and is available in various forms and sizes, from glue-laminated timber to wood polymers. We therefore consider industrial robots ideal machines for interacting with wood, as they are not limited to subtractive fabrication, but can bend, weave, glue, spray, etc. As a cooperative effort of architects with a significant background in robotics, master carpenters with decades of experience with wood, mathematicians with elaborate knowledge of geometry, and practicing designers, this transdisciplinary project aims to investigate interfaces and robots as instruments for artists, designers and architects to play with the geometry of motion and to couple this multifaceted machine with the similarly diverse material wood. By considering fabrication and wood immanent constraints in a digital environment, virtual prototyping will liberate architects and designers in design and design evaluation. Industrial robots are therefore researched in this project as a playful tool, not as a replacement for the artists arm or a production-machine. By seeing industrial robots as powerful and intuitive tool we aim to move creativity to new frontiers in wood geometry and craft, in tool collaborations and human-environment interactions that are far beyond file to factory.

The goal of the Robotic Woodcraft project has been to explore the artistic potential of robotic arms within a creative environment, focusing on wood as a complex material with a long tradition that is still not fully explored and understood.This complex task required the assembly of a highly multidisciplinary team, bringing together knowledge from very different institutions and disciplines. The core of the project is located at the University for Applied Arts Vienna: Through the project funding, project leader Prof. Glaeser, mathematician and head of the department for Arts and Technology, was able to purchase a high-end industrial robot by the German manufacturer KUKA and set it up at the department for Wood Technology a well-equipped workshop employing six master carpenters, but until then relying only on very simple 2-axis CNC technology. The know-how to operate and control the robot was acquired by partnering with the Association for Robots in Architecture, bringing with them many years of experience of working with robots in the context of the creative industry, and developing their own software tools. Finally, the design study Lucy.D, based in Vienna and already teaching at the University, entered the project as a creative partner, contributing their experience in both hands-on design as well as design theory.Being fundamental research, the Robotic Woodcraft consortium did not develop commercial applications to be mass-fabricated on robotic arms. Instead we carefully analysed processes involving wood with the goal of identify processes that have the potential of benefiting from the strength, and accuracy of robotic arms. Rather than replacing carpenters, the consortium therefore investigated how men and machine can collaborate, bringing together the fine touch, intuitive problem solving, and high adaptability of a carpenter with the machinic strength and 0.1mm accuracy of the robot, towards producing new geometries and designs that would otherwise not be possible.The resulting concepts, designs, and artwork were documented in a wide variety of scientific, peer-reviewed publications as well as both national as well as international media. To promote the approaches developed within the project we have also exhibited at numerous events, from an international exhibition in Hong Kong, to an installation at the digital media museum Ars Electronica, and also crafts-oriented fairs like the Austrian Handcraft 2017 fair.By showing robots not as intimidating high-end machines that replace human labour, but rather creative design tools and interfaces, we hope to have inspired architects, artists and designers and will continue that research in future, collaborative projects.