February 17 2017
Tutor: Jelle Feringa / Odico / EZCT Architecture & Design Research
Participants: Sille Pihlak, Siim Tuksam, Märten Peterson, Johanna Jõekalda, Lauri Läänelaid, Siim Karro, Ljudmilla Georgijeva, Martin Melioranski
Support: Eesti Kultuurkapital, EAA
In January this year 3DL of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at EAA received a cobot – a collaborative robot – from Universal Robots.
It is a six-axis UR10 with a maximum reach of 1300mm and payload of 10kg. All joints can turn 360 degrees – indefinitely.
Among UR10’s other advantages, are the use of regular 230VAC power and integrated safety features.
The one day workshop with Jelle Feringa from Odico was the first attempts to make the robot move and react in real-time according to procedural rulesets.
Prior to the workshop, we were running the robot from its hand-held console, similarly to its industrial applications.
Jelle’s extensive knowledge of robotic technologies started with a search for appropriate software for architecture students to integrate the robot into the otherwise widely used parametric framework. We selected a Grasshopper plugin called Robots, that is used for programming ABB, KUKA and UR robots for custom applications over a TCP/IP network.
It can be found at https://github.com/visose/Robots
The process of dense experimentation with calibrating the code for the cobot resulted in sucessful results and a day filled with building the base for further developments of integrating machinic processes into architectural investigations.