Distributed Robotics

Research Area

Distributed robotics is an emerging field of research interested in the assembly, disassembly, rearrangement and maintenance of architectural structures using teams of small, agile mobile robots. This represents a fundamentally different approach to current approaches to construction automation and has further implications on the entire lifecycle of a building. As such, the distributed robotics research is investigating the potentials of and fundamental methods for deploying inexpensive machines for the production of complex, functionally adapted structures in highly parallel processes.

Related Research Projects

Lights-Off On-Site Timber Construction

Task and Motion Planning for Collaborative Robotic Construction with Irregular Materials

Development of Wood Building Systems for Construction Processes using Distributed Robotics

Robotic Kinematic System for Parallel Construction

Multi-Robot Systems for Self-Organized Construction

Related Thesis Projects

Bridging the Sim-to-Real Gap in Collective Robotic Construction

Dendri Bots

Awakened Structures

Differential Boundary Deposition

Building Across Scales - A Robotic Timber Fabrication System for On-Site Press Gluing

A Distributed System for Fibrous Networks

Adaptive Intelligent Space

Joint Effort - Robot Team Enabled Carbon Fiber Joining Strategies for Lightweight Wood Construction

Co-Designing Material-Robot Behaviors - Systems for Autonomous Construction

RePneu

Stitchbot - on-textile design plus fabrication

Distributed Robotic Assembly System For in Situ Timber Construction

Self-Choreographing Network - Towards Cyber-Physical Design and Operation Processes of Adaptive and Interactive Bending-Active Systems

Cyber Physical Macro Material - A UAV [re]configurable architectural system

Collaborative Robotic Winding For Coreless Fibrous Structures

MAV Assisted Fabrication Strategy for Large Scale Fiber Composite Structures

Mobile Robotic Fabrication System For Filament Structures

Related Research Demonstrators and Prototypes

Distributed Robotic Assembly System for In-Situ Timber Construction

Cyber Physical Macro Material

MoRFES_01: Mobile Robotic Fabrication Eco-System

MoRFES_02: Mobile Robotic Fabrication Eco-System

ICD/ITKE Research Pavilion 2016-17

Mobile Robotic Fabrication System for Filament Structures

Related Research Tools

RP 19 Autonomous Assembly Robot

ABxM

Selected Publications

  1. 2024

    1. Skoury, L., Leder, S., Menges, A., & Wortmann, T. (2024). Digital twin architecture for the AEC Industry : A case study in collective robotic construction. Inproceeding Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE 27th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, 413–418. https://doi.org/10.1145/3652620.3688255
    2. Siriwardena, L., Stark, T., Lut, S., Wagner, H. J., Maierhofer, M., Bechert, S., Knippers, J., & Menges, A. (2024, July 7). Joint Effort - A Material-Robot System for Fibrous Joints of Lightweight Timber Construction. https://doi.org/10.1145/3639473.3665791
    3. Leder, S., Kim, H., Sitti, M., & Menges, A. (2024). Enhanced co-design and evaluation of a collective robotic construction system for the assembly of large-scale in-plane timber structures. Automation in Construction, 162, 105390. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2024.105390
    4. Opgenorth, N., Locatelli, D. N., Leder, S., Wagner, H. J., & Menges, A. (2024). Multi-scalar robotic fabrication system for on-site press gluing in multi-storey timber buildings. Automation in Construction, 168, 105774. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2024.105774
    5. Leder, S., Kannenberg, F., Siriwardena, L., Schwinn, T., & Menges, A. (2024). Approaching the Augmentation of Heuristic Behaviors with Reinforcement Learning in Collective Robotic Construction. SIGraDi 2024 - Biodigital Intelligent Systems XXVIII International Conference of the Ibero-American Society for Digital Graphics, 1. https://sigradi.org/sigradi2024/
    6. Leder, S., Siriwardena, L., Kragl, P., & Menges, A. (2024). Cyber-Physical Explorations of Collective Robotic Construction using Agent-Based Modelling. Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2024.
    7. Zhang, P., Sevim, S., Leder, S., Maierhofer, M., Schwinn, T., & Menges, A. (2024). Multi-Robotic Maypole Braiding. In O. Kontovourkis, M. C. Phocas, & G. Wurzer (Eds.), Data-Driven Intelligence - Proceedings of the 42nd Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe 2024) (Vol. 1, pp. 137–146). eCAADe.
    8. Leder, S., & Menges, A. (2024). Merging architectural design and robotic planning using interactive agent-based modelling for collective robotic construction. Journal of Computational Design and Engineering, 11(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcde/qwae028
    9. Johnson, M., Kragl, P., Tucker, M., Leder, S., Kalousdian, N. K., & Menges, A. (2024). Differential Boundary Deposition: Towards Collective Robotic Construction with Amorphous Materials. Robotic Fabrication in Architecture,  Art and Design 2018.

  2. 2023

    1. Leder, S., & Menges, A. (2023). Introducing Agent-Based Modeling Methods for Designing Architectural Structures with Multiple Mobile Robotic Systems. In C. Gengnagel, O. Baverel, G. Betti, M. Popescu, M. R. Thomsen, & J. Wurm (Eds.), Towards Radical Regeneration (pp. 71--83). Springer International Publishing.
    2. Yang, X., Lehrecke, A., Tucker, C., Estrada, R. D., Maierhofer, M., & Menges, A. (2023). Spatial Lacing: A Novel Composite Material System for Fibrous Networks. In C. Gengnagel, O. Baverel, G. Betti, M. Popescu, M. R. Thomsen, & J. Wurm (Eds.), Towards Radical Regeneration (pp. 556--568). Springer International Publishing.
    3. Yablonina, M. (2023). Designing with machines : task- and site-specific robotic teams for architectural in situ making. In Research reports / Institute for Computational Design and Construction (Dissertation No. 8, Institute for Computational Design and Construction, University of Stuttgart; Issue 8). https://doi.org/10.18419/opus-14509
    4. Leder, S., & Menges, A. (2023). Architectural design in collective robotic construction. Automation in Construction, 156, 105082. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2023.105082

  3. 2022

    1. Tucker, C., Yang, X., Lehrecke, A., Maierhofer, M., Duque Estrada, R., & Menges, A. (2022). A Collaborative Multi-robot Platform for the Distributed Fabrication of Three-dimensional Fibrous Networks (Spatial Lacing). Proceedings of the 7th Annual ACM Symposium on Computational Fabrication, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1145/3559400.3561995
    2. Leder, S., Kim, H., Oguz, O. S., Kalousdian, N. K., Hartmann, V. N., Menges, A., Toussaint, M., & Sitti, M. (2022). Leveraging Building Material as Part of the In-Plane Robotic Kinematic System for Collective Construction. Advanced Science, 2201524. https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202201524
    3. Kubail Kalousdian, N., Lochnicki, G., Hartmann, V. N., Leder, S., Oguz, O. S., Menges, A., & Toussaint, M. (2022). Learning Robotic Manipulation of Natural Materials with Variable Properties for Construction Tasks. IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, 1–1. https://doi.org/10.1109/LRA.2022.3159288

  4. 2021

    1. Yablonina, M., Ringley, B., Brugnaro, G., & Menges, A. (2021). Soft Office: a human--robot collaborative system for adaptive spatial configuration. Construction Robotics. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41693-021-00056-x
    2. Łochnicki, G., Kubail Kalousdian, N., Leder, S., Maierhofer, M., Wood, D., & Menges, A. (2021). Co-Designing Material-Robot Construction Behaviors: Teaching distributed robotic systems to leverage active bending for light-touch assembly of bamboo bundle structures. In B. Farahi, B. Bogosian, J. Scott, J. L. García del Castillo y López, K. Dörfler, J. A. Grant, S. Parascho, & V. A. A. Noel (Eds.), Realignments: Toward Critical Computation - ACADIA 2021.

  5. 2020

    1. Leder, S., Kim, H., Ozgur, O. S., Hartmann, V., Toussaint, M., Menges, A., & Sitti, M. (2020). Co-Design in Architecture: A Modular Material-Robot Kinematic Construction System. 2020 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) Proceedings of Workshop on Construction and Architecture Robotics.
    2. Wyller, M., Yablonina, M., Alvarez, M., & Menges, A. (2020). Adaptive kinematic textile architecture. Construction Robotics, 4(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41693-020-00046-5
    3. Vasey, L., Felbrich, B., Prado, M., Tahanzadeh, B., & Menges, A. (2020). Physically distributed multi-robot coordination and collaboration in construction: A case study in long span coreless filament winding for fiber composites. Construction Robotics, 4(1–2), Article 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41693-020-00031-y
    4. Melenbrink, N., Rinderspacher, K., Menges, A., & Werfel, J. (2020). Autonomous anchoring for robotic construction. Automation in Construction, 120, 103391. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2020.103391
    5. Melenbrink, N., Werfel, J., & Menges, A. (2020). On-site autonomous construction robots: Towards unsupervised building. Automation in Construction, 119, 103312. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2020.103312

  6. 2019

    1. Maierhofer, M., Soana, V., Yablonina, M., Suzuki, S., Koerner, A., Knippers, J., & Menges, A. (2019). Self-Choreographing Network: Towards cyber-physical design and operation processes of adaptive and interactive bending-active systems. In K. Bieg, D. Briscoe, & C. Odom (Eds.), ACADIA – Ubiquity and Autonomy - Proceedings of the 39th ACADIA Conference 2019 (pp. 654--663). https://doi.org/10.52842/conf.acadia.2019.654
    2. Leder, S., Weber, R., Wood, D., Bucklin, O., & Menges, A. (2019). Distributed Robotic Timber Construction: Designing of in-situ timber construction system with robot-material collaboration. In K. Bieg, D. Briscoe, & C. Odom (Eds.), ACADIA – Ubiquity and Autonomy - Proceedings of the 39th ACADIA Conference 2019.
    3. Yablonina, M., & Menges, A. (2019). Distributed Fabrication: Cooperative Making with Larger Groups of Smaller Machines. Architectural Design, 89(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.2413
    4. Yablonina, M., & Menges, A. (2019). Multi-species Robotic Fabrication for Filament Structures: Towards a Robotic Ecosystem, 2015. In G. Retsin, M. Jimenez Garcia, M. Claypool, & V. Soler (Eds.), Robotic Building: Architecture in the Age of Automation (pp. 86--87). DETAIL. https://doi.org/10.11129/9783955534257
    5. Yablonina, M., Leder, S., Kubail Kalousdian, N., & Menges, A. (2019). Choreographed Space: Distributed Mobile Robotic System for Temporal Architectural Change. ICETAD 2019 - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Emerging Technologies in Architectural Design.

  7. 2018

    1. Yablonina, M., & Menges, A. (2018). Towards the Development of Fabrication Machine Species for Filament Materials. Robotic Fabrication in Architecture, Art and Design 2018 Proceedings of the RobArch Conference 2018, 152--166. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92294-2_12
    2. Wood, D., Yablonina, M., Aflalo, M., Chen, J., Tahanzadeh, B., & Menges, A. (2018). Cyber Physical Macro Material as a UAV reConfigurable Architectural System. 320--335. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92294-2_25
    3. Leder, S., Weber, R., Bucklin, O., Wood, D., & Menges, A. (2018). Towards Distributed In-Situ Robotic Timber Construction. Proceedings of Research Culture in Architecture Conference 2018 (RCA 2018).
    4. Melenbrink, N., & Werfel, J. (2018). Local force cues for strength and stability in a distributed robotic construction system. Swarm Intelligence, 12(2), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11721-017-0149-2

  8. 2017

    1. Melenbrink, N., Michalatos, P., Kassabian, P., & Werfel, J. (2017). Using Local Force Measurements to Guide Construction by Distributed Climbing Robots. IROS Proceedings of the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2017, 4333--4340. https://doi.org/10.1109/IROS.2017.8206298
    2. Yablonina, M., Prado, M., Baharlou, E., Schwinn, T., & Menges, A. (2017). Mobile Robotic Fabrication System For Filament Structures. Rethinking Design and Construction - Proceedings of the Fabricate Conference 2017, 202--209.
    3. Felbrich, B., Frueh, N., Prado, M., Saffarian, S., Solly, J., Vasey, L., Knippers, J., & Menges, A. (2017). Multi-Machine Fabrication: An Integrative Design Process Utilising an Autonomous UAV and Industrial Robots for the Fabrication of Long-Span Composite Structures. Disciplines & Disruption - Proceedings of the ACADIA Conference 2017, 248--259.
    4. Melenbrink, N., Kassabian, P., Menges, A., & Werfel, J. (2017). Towards Force-aware Robot Collectives for On-site Construction. Disciplines & Disruption - Proceedings of the ACADIA Conference 2017, 382--391.

Contact Information

This image shows Samuel Leder

Samuel Leder

M.Sc.

Research Associate

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