Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Local force cues for strength and stability in a distributed robotic construction system

  • Published:
Swarm Intelligence Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Construction of spatially extended, self-supporting structures requires a consideration of structural stability throughout the building sequence. For collective construction systems, where independent agents act with variable order and timing under decentralized control, ensuring stability is a particularly pronounced challenge. Previous research in this area has largely neglected considering stability during the building process. Physical forces present throughout a structure may be usable as a cue to inform agent actions as well as an indirect communication mechanism (stigmergy) to coordinate their behavior, as adding material leads to redistribution of forces which then informs the addition of further material. Here we consider in simulation a system of decentralized climbing robots capable of traversing and extending a two-dimensional truss structure, and explore the use of feedback based on force sensing as a way for the swarm to anticipate and prevent structural failures. We consider a scenario in which robots are tasked with building an unsupported cantilever across a gap, as for a bridge, where the goal is for the swarm to build any stable spanning structure rather than to construct a specific predetermined blueprint. We show that access to local force measurements enables robots to build cantilevers that span significantly farther than those built by robots without access to such information. This improvement is achieved by taking measures to maintain both strength and stability, where strength is ensured by paying attention to forces during locomotion to prevent joints from breaking, and stability is maintained by looking at how loads transfer to the ground to ensure against toppling. We show that swarms that take both kinds of forces into account have improved building performance, in both structured settings with flat ground and unpredictable environments with rough terrain.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7
Fig. 8
Fig. 9
Fig. 10
Fig. 11
Fig. 12
Fig. 13
Fig. 14

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Ardiny, H., Witwicki, S., & Mondada, F. (2015). Construction automation with autonomous mobile robots: A review. In 3rd RSI international conference on robotics and mechatronics (ICROM) (pp. 418–424). IEEE.

  • Augugliaro, F., Lupashin, S., Hamer, M., Male, C., Hehn, M., Mueller, M., et al. (2014). The flight assembled architecture installation: Cooperative construction with flying machines. IEEE Control Systems Magazine, 34, 46–64.

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  • Augugliaro, F., Mirjan, A., Gramazio, F., Kohler, M., & D’Andrea, R. (2013). Building tensile structures with flying machines. In IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems.

  • Augugliaro, F., Zarfati, E., Mirjan, A., & D’Andrea, R. (2015). Knot-tying with flying machines for aerial construction. In IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems.

  • Baharlou, E., & Menges, A. (2013). Behavioural prototyping: An approach to agent-based computational design driven by fabrication characteristics and material constraints. In Rethinking prototyping, Proceedings of the design modelling symposium Berlin 2013 (pp. 291–303).

  • Baharlou, E., & Menges, A. (2015). Toward a behavioral design system: An agent-based approach for polygonal surfaces structures. In Proceedings of the 35th annual conference of the association for computer aided design in architecture (ACADIA) (pp. 161–172).

  • Brodbeck, L., & Iida, F. (2014). Automatic real-world assembly of machine-designed structures. In 2014 IEEE international conference on robotics & automation (ICRA) (pp. 1221–1226). Hong Kong.

  • Coxworth, B. (2010). The brick-road-laying tiger stone. New Atlas.

  • Funes, P., & Pollack, J. (1999). Computer evolution of buildable objects. In P. Bentley (Ed.), Evolutionary design by computers (pp. 387–403). San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Galloway, K., Jois, R., & Yim, M. (2010). Factory floor: A robotically reconfigurable construction platform. In Proceedings of 2010 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation. Anchorage, Alaska.

  • Helm, V., Ercan, S., Gramazio, F., & Kohler, M. (2012). Mobile robotic fabrication on construction sites: Dimrob. In 2012 IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS), pp. 4335–4341. IEEE.

  • Jokic, S., Novikov, P., Maggs, S., Sadan, D., Jin, S., & Nan, C. (2014). Robotic positioning device for three-dimensional printing. In CoRR.

  • Keating, S. J., Leland, J. C., Cai, L., & Oxman, N. (2017). Toward site-specific and self-sufficient robotic fabrication on architectural scales. Science Robotics, 2, eaam8986.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Khoshnevis, B. (2004). Automated construction by contour crafting related robotics and information technologies. Automation in Construction, 13(1), 5–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Lindsey, Q., Mellinger, D., & Kumar, V. (2011). Construction of cubic structures with quadrotor teams. In Proceedings of robotics: science and systems (pp. 177–184). Los Angeles, CA, USA.

  • Lindsey, Q., Mellinger, D., & Kumar, V. (2012). Construction with quadrotor teams. Autonomous Robots, 33, 323–336. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10514-012-9305-0.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • McEvoy, M., Komendera, E., & Correll, N. (2014). Assembly path planning for stable robotic construction. In Proceedings of IEEE international conference on technologies for practical robot applications (TePRA). Boston, MA.

  • Melenbrink, N., Michalatos, P., Kassabian, P., Werfel, J. (2017). Using local force measurements to guide construction by distributed climbing robots. In Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS).

  • Melhuish, C., Welsby, J., Edwards, C. (1999). Using templates for defensive wall building with autonomous mobile ant-like robots. In Proceedings of towards intelligent autonomous mobile robots (Vol. 99).

  • Napp, N., & Nagpal, R. (2014). Distributed amorphous ramp construction in unstructured environments. Robotica, 32(2), 279–290.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Napp, N., Nagpal, R. (2014). Robotic construction of arbitrary shapes with amorphous materials. In 2014 IEEE international conference on robotics and automation (ICRA) (pp. 438–444). IEEE.

  • Napp, N., Rappoli, O.R., Wu, J.M., Nagpal, R. (2012). Materials and mechanisms for amorphous robotic construction. In 2012 IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems (IROS) (pp. 4879–4885). IEEE.

  • Nigl, F., Li, S., Blum, J. E., & Lipson, H. (2013). Structure-reconfiguring robots: Autonomous truss reconfiguration and manipulation. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, 20, 60–71.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Parascho S. (2013) Agent based model for the development of integrative design tools. In Proceedings of the 33rd annual conference of the association for computer aided design in architecture (ACADIA) (pp. 429–430).

  • Parker, C. A., & Zhang, H. (2006). Collective robotic site preparation. Adaptive Behavior, 14(1), 5–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pritschow, G., Dalacker, M., Kurz, J., & Gaenssle, M. (1996). Technological aspects in the development of a mobile bricklaying robot. Automation in Construction, 5(1), 3–13.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shepherd, S., Buchstab, A. (2014). Kuka robots on-site. In W. McGee & M. Ponce de Leon (Eds.), Robotic fabrication in architecture, art and design 2014 (pp. 373–380). Berlin: Springer.

  • Sklar, J. (2015). Robots lay three times as many bricks as construction workers. Cambridge: MIT Technology Review.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stroupe, A., Okon, A., Robinson, M., Huntsberger, T., Aghazarian, H., & Baumgartner, E. (2006). Sustainable cooperative robotic technologies for human and robotic outpost infrastructure construction and maintenance. Autonomous Robots, 20(2), 113–123.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Terada, Y., Murata, S. (2005). Automatic assembly system for modular structure. In Proceedings of the 22nd international symposium on automation and robotics in construction.

  • Terada, Y., & Murata, S. (2008). Automatic modular assembly system and its distributed control. The International Journal of Robotics Research, 27(3–4), 445–462.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Trinh, G., Copplestone, G., O’Connor, M., Hu, S., Nowak, S., Cheung, K., Jenett, B., Cellucci, D. (2017). Robotically assembled aerospace structures: Digital material assembly using a gantry-type assembler. In Proceedings of IEEE aerospace conference (pp. 1–7).

  • Vasey, L., Baharlou, E., Drstelmann, M., Koslowski, V., Prado, M., Schieber, G., Menges, A., Knippers, J. (2015). Behavioral design and adaptive robotic fabrication of a fiber composite compression shell with pneumatic formwork. In Proceedings of the 35th annual conference of the association for computer aided design in architecture (ACADIA) (pp. 297–309).

  • Wang, Z., & Schwager, M. (2016). Force-amplifying n-robot transport system (force-ants) for cooperative planar manipulation without communication. International Journal of Robotics Research, 35, 1564–1586.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wawerla, J., Sukhatme, G.S., Mataric, M.J. (2002). Collective construction with multiple robots. In IEEE/RSJ international conference on intelligent robots and systems 2002 (Vol. 3, pp. 2696–2701). IEEE.

  • Werfel, J., Petersen, K., & Nagpal, R. (2014). Designing collective behavior in a termite-inspired robot construction team. Science, 343(6172), 754–758.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Willmann, J., Augugliaro, F., Cadalbert, T., D’Andrea, R., Gramazio, F., & Kohler, M. (2012). Aerial robotic construction: Towards a new field of architectural research. International Journal of Architectural Computing, 10–3, 439–460. https://doi.org/10.1260/1478-0771.10.3.439.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Yun, S., & Rus, D. (2011). Optimal self assembly of modular manipulators with active and passive modules. Autonomous Robots, 31, 183–207.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Nathan Melenbrink & Justin Werfel

  2. Institute for Computational Design and Construction, University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany

    Nathan Melenbrink

Authors
  1. Nathan Melenbrink
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Justin Werfel
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nathan Melenbrink.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Melenbrink, N., Werfel, J. Local force cues for strength and stability in a distributed robotic construction system. Swarm Intell 12, 129–153 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11721-017-0149-2

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11721-017-0149-2

Keywords

Search

Navigation