Joint Effort - A Material-Robot System for Fibrous Joints of Lightweight Timber Construction

In response to the escalating demands of global urbanisation and the environmental imperative to minimise material usage and emissions, this research proposes an autonomous material-robot system to assist in a potential solution for timber building extension. The system demonstrates multi-robot in-situ joining strategies by co-designing a structural joint with a timber building system and mobile robotic agents. In-situ robotic joining techniques are essential for a fully autonomous on-site assembly workflow, but they largely remain unexplored. The investigation focuses on developing a mobile joining robot that locomotes pre-routed grooves while deploying carbon fibre-reinforced polymers (CFRPs), establishing a structurally performant wood joint in-situ. In contrast to current human-centric steel fasteners, CFRPs are flexible and compact and can be easily integrated into mobile robots, enabling the exploration of novel robot-oriented connection typologies. By understanding the timber as an integral part of the robotic system, assembly information, including instructions for navigation, tasks and localisation, is pre-programmed into the material. This substantially reduces robot complexity, weight, size, and cost and allows for decentralised control of the connection agents. The robot path becomes the structural joint path. A fully autonomous assembly choreography can be performed on-site through cooperation between different robots and materials. This leverages the task-specific capabilities of each agent in the team and high-accuracy prefabrication. The introduction of this system proposes a shift away from traditional human-centric construction methods towards a robot-oriented building strategy. This approach challenges the conventional reliance on steel fasteners in timber assemblies and demonstrates the potential for robotic teams to facilitate sustainable and innovative construction methodologies. The research expands on fibrous joints by automating them and furthering Collective Robotic Construction (CRC) research by integrating novel structural fastening methods.