This year, our course Architectural Geometry at TU Vienna (Sigrid Brell-Cokcan & Johannes Braumann – Association for Robots in Architecture, Michael Hofer – WWTF, Michael Eigensatz – Evolute) was stormed by no less than 70 students, thereby posing serious logistical troubles as such a group would not safely fit into TU Vienna’s model building workshop.

Fortunately, ABB Austria was so kind to offer us to use their facilities in Wiener Neudorf, including no less than 4 robots from really small to really large – time for a fieldtrip! As guest lecturer, we invited Thibault Schwartz, Association for Robots in Architecture member and developer of HAL, to present his work to our students. It was an eventful day, with much hands-on robot time.

We even hosted our very own robot competition, whose grand prize – a toy-robot with movable axes – was provided by ABB, along with some ABB-branded wine for the runner-ups. We want to thank to David Kittel and Martin Kohlmaier for being supportive on such short notice!

Call for Papers | Rob|Arch 2012: Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art, and Design | www.robarch2012.org
Workshops: 14.-16.12.2012 / Conference: 17.-18.12.2012

ROB|ARCH has been initiated by the Association for Robots in Architecture as a new conference series on the use of robotic fabrication in architecture, art, and design, closely linking industry with cutting-edge research institutions.

For the first time, ROB|ARCH 2012 will bring together international university partners who will open their robotic research labs to a creative use and present an insight in their applied robotic research at various locations throughout Europe. While the international workshops will be distributed at university partners, the following conference will take place in Vienna, a city well known for its living quality, but also a hotspot for technology and innovation.

Schedule:

13.12.2012
Free sponsor “pre-workshops” for ABB Robot Studio and Grasshopper

14.12. – 16.12.2012
Conference workshops:
@Rotterdam: 2x ABB IRB6400 by TU Delft and University of Michigan/Jelle Feringa & Wes McGee
@Stuttgart: KUKA KR125/2 by University Stuttgart / Achim Menges & Tobias Schwinn
@Graz: ABB IRB6600 by TU Graz / Andreas Trummer
@Zurich: KUKA KR150 by ETH Zurich and ROB Technologies / Gramazio & Kohler
@Vienna: 2x KUKA LWR by TU Vienna / Marcus Vincze et al.
@Vienna: ABB IRB120 by HAL /  Thibault Schwartz

Paper Submission

We invite authors to submit papers with original research relating to the use of robots in architecture, art, and design. An international scientific committee consisting of researchers and practising architects will evaluate the papers and provide feedback to the authors. The selected papers are published in the Springer proceedings and presented at the conference in Vienna.

Electronic Submission of Abstracts 04.06.2012
Electronic Submission of Full Papers 16.07.2012
Author notification 10.09. 2012
Final Paper due 01.10.2012

Information and Contact
See www.robarch2012.org for details and up-to-date information. For any questions regarding the Rob|Arch 2012 conference, please contact chair@robarch2012.org

Sigrid Brell Cokcan & Johannes Braumann
Conference Chairs, Association for Robots in Architecture

The robots in architecture are multiplying! Our list of robots in architecture now contains no less than 18 institutions with robots in architecture. We welcome the most recent additions: McGill University in Canada recently got a Fanuc robot, and Radlab in Boston informed us that they’re using a KUKA KR15. The IaaC in Barcelona also took delivery of a KUKA robot in January.

Exciting times!

Thibault Schwartz has updated his HAL robot plugin to version 0.02! You can get it from here.

*New components
TargetDeviationCheck utility
Tooldata declaration utility
Wobjdata declaration utility
Overrides utility

* Fixes
Kinematic Solver: bug with second axis rotation is solved Milling Head: endmill geometry is now generated. TCP plane error has been corrected.
Rapid Generator has been re-written, and is now working with work objects. A “CorrecTool” option allows to come back to the ancient behavior, which was based on a tool with a null quaternion. Speeds and Zones automatic prefix has been suppressed. It now handles 17000 couple of instructions (declaration & motion) / seconde.
The Rapid.mod has been slightly changed: you can now add declarations (ToolDatas, SpeedData, WobjData, etc.) and overrides (ConfJ, ConfL, SingArea, etc.)
The Toolpath Discretization component was buggy on polylines, it is fixed.
The Ruled Surface component is now a lot more complete, and allows to use a polycurve and extraction points to generate a toolpath for wirecutting.

We’ve uploaded a new version of KUKA|prc, this is a bugfix release which fixes several problems reported by our members and was tested with the most up-to-date version of Grasshopper. Most importantly, it is no longer necessary to save settings to an external XML file – instead, the settings are embedded into the Grasshopper definition. Just click “Apply Settings” in the GUI and they are saved. Please note that this update breaks compatibility. If you open an existing GH file that contains a Grasshopper component, you will get an IO error and the KUKA|prc component will have disappeared. Just put it in again and re-connect it, and you’re good to go.

Members of the Association for Robots in Architecture are already using the KUKA|prc component for multi-100.000€ projects – more details coming soon.

Download the component from here or from Food4Rhino