Week 2: Robotics Readings

The assigned article is very technical and uses a lot of definitions. It does elaborate on the mechanics of robots and their configurations, and also does well to explain the kinematics and workings of robots, while detailing various components and types of robots. However, this article uses terminology that is likely better understood by engineers or researchers familiar with the field of robotics. The technical content is, therefore, a bit overwhelming. Overall, this article is also significantly more text-heavy than the other two articles I read, which focus more on applications of robots as interactive sensors for building architecture and engineering. This article delves into the details of how many types of robots work, providing a general overview of the field of robotics. The other two articles are more specific and explicitly state some of the uses of robotics in buildings, and their content assumes some familiarity with much of the content addressed in the assigned article.

The second article I read relates the use of Local Positioning Systems (LPS) and Natural Feature Positioning Systems (NFPS) to the workings of satellite Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and its advanced use in robots used for collecting building space data and optimizing the temperature, energy, and air quality of a building, among other characteristics. The article also explicitly notes the usefulness of this technique to respond to emergency situations in a building and to communicate any sensed observations to a central building controls system. The article looks forward to the future of this application in buildings and states that further development has the potential to accomplish other useful tracking and recording features, such as sensing the conditions of building floors. This article aims to promote the idea of mapping devices revolutionizing their use in buildings. As this post also suggests, though this industry is focusing on the construction phase of buildings, ensuring the safety and maintenance of buildings is also a priority in this field and is also being continually developed.

The third article I read relates the use of robotics in architectural design. It focuses on the advantages that come with using fabrication robots, called ROB Units, to create prefabricated construction materials via algorithm programming. While the first article helps to define some of the qualities of the robot units discussed in the third article, the second article focuses on the maintenance of safety of buildings, as opposed to the importance and use of robotics in construction. This article also discusses the construction of a 72-foot structural wall made of bricks. This construction took place using preprogrammed units, but researchers in Zurich are looking into the ability of these robots to perform this type of construction while making “design decisions” simultaneously. This concept proposes a great potential in the field of robotics and its relation to building design and construction.