Development of an experimental platform for architectural-scale robotics : the Digital Construction Platform

• Main Author: Bell, Julian Leland
• Other Authors: Neri Oxman and David L. Trumper.
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2018
• Subjects: Mechanical Engineering.
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/113726

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 2017. === This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. === Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis. === Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-232). === This thesis describes the development and refinement of the second prototype of the Digital Construction Platform, or DCP. The DCP is a serial-link micro-macro manipulator robot intended for architectural-scale fabrication tasks, originally conceived of and presented by Keating in [1]. It is envisioned primarily as a platform for experimentation in automated construction, rather than as a closed, single-application system. In the work described here, a second prototype of the DCP -- referred to as the DCP v.2 -- was developed over two distinct periods. During the first period, from September 2015 through August 2016, the DCP v.2 system was assembled and a basic command and control architecture was developed to operate it. A series of experiments were conducted to examine the system's performance, including pose repeatability testing in accordance with the ISO 9283-1998 robot performance characterization standard; and the fabrication of an architectural-scale dome structure from spray polyurethane foam. During the second period, from September 2016 through August 2016, the DCP v.2 system and command/control architecture were modified in a variety of ways to improve performance, reliability, accessibility to new users, and adaptability to new tasks. These modifications included transition to a modular, hard-real-time control architecture; installation of additional sensor systems on the vehicle; and the refinement and standardization of the system's tool-path generation architecture. The impact of this work was demonstrated through a second set of demonstrations, including large-scale light paintings leveraging the new control architecture's capabilities; and re-characterization of the system's ISO 9283 pose repeatability, demonstrating a 59% improvement in this metric. === by Julian Leland Bell. === S.M.