Over time, robots have become more capable of matching and exceeding human capabilities, even though some employments still seem beyond their reach. Still, robots are no longer merely passive onlookers capturing information about an environment, they are engaging with it through manipulation, construction, and interaction.
Against this backdrop, aerial robotics became a common applied research tool for many different fields. In construction, drones are usually deployed for inspection, surveying, and mapping tasks in complex or dangerous environments that are barely accessible to humans and heavy machinery. These robots are capable of going beyond the simple gathering of data. They actively contribute to the building processes, instructed by generative design algorithms that translate digital data into flight paths and behaviors.
This research focuses on the application of drone technology to collect data for the design process, creating new knowledge that culminates in the development of new design methods. Hence a new paradigm leading towards generative design emerges.
The Aerial Stigmergy workshop, organized by Noumena and Design Morphine, is a one-week learning experience designed as an immersive journey in aerial robotics, open innovation, computational design, digital fabrication, and collaborative culture. The toolset includes, but is not limited to Rhinoceros, Grasshopper, Processing as well as analysis software. It is intended for students of architecture and urbanism as well as professional architects, designers, and artists interested in contemporary digital design techniques.
Aerial Stigmergy aims to investigate a nonconventional construction system informed by environmental data collected by aerial robots. It will explore generative design methodology based on data-driven strategies. The workshop will be a team-based program and will be divided into different phases through which participants will build up several skills and develop their own design strategies.
The first phase of the workshop is about understanding software and hardware for flying and measuring environmental data. Participants will learn diverse strategies to fly the drone autonomously in an optimized way, to map terrain via near-infrared filtered camera, and to sense the environment through Smart Citizen board, which is able to collect data about temperature, humidity, noise, and CO2.
Participants will then embrace computational techniques to organize and visualize data gained during the first stage, by generating environmental 3D cartographies. Using these maps and database as resourceful informative documents will generate ideas for further speculations on the potentials of generative design proposals.
In response to the collected data values and 3D cartography of mapped areas, a series of agent-based generative strategies will be proposed. With constant feedback, architecture is no longer designed, then built. Instead, it adapts over time to the informed data. This stage explores bottom-up methodologies for time-based design in response to environmental data. Inspired by nature, students will design with behavioral rules for flocking, stigmergy, and 3D formations. This will generate a catalog of simulations of 4D objects that will be evaluated based on specific design brief and criteria explored by each team.
Daily meetings will take place from 9:30 to 18:00.
There will be a final presentation of your group's work containing renderings and diagrams on May 2, 2017.
All works will be published on Design Morphine web page.
All participants who complete the workshop will receive a certificate of completion.
To attend the workshop and intensive courses, no previous software experience is required.
Participants need to bring their own laptops or workstations.
Places are very limited and will be assigned on a first-pay, first-served basis.
Late registration: March 27, 2017.