From scrap to frame
There’s little standardisation in wood for industrial construction. To compensate and avoid half of it being wasted, an EPFL team has developed an interactive robotic construction assistant.
Plans are projected, wood scraps arranged appropriately. | Photo: Lab for Creative Computation, EPFL
Wood is on the rise in construction. It’s renewable and a carbon store, so it receives a much better press than concrete or steel. It’s therefore a paradox that half of what goes into industrial processes ends up on the scrap heap. It wouldn’t be accurate to describe wood as a standardised material, whereas making robots requires just such inputs. This growing demand therefore calls for better management.
An EPFL team has been working on a system to use wood scraps in the construction of load-bearing structures. “We considered the variability of the material as an engine, not as an obstacle”, says Eleni Skevaki, a PhD student at the Lab for Creative Computation. The system is called ‘Truss from Trash’ and it draws a link between humans and robots.
Here’s how it works: a user places pieces of wood waste on a table. A camera analyses each one in real time. A projector displays the evolutionary plan of the structure, on a 1:1 scale, on the work surface. There’s no classic computer interface here, just physical markers placed by hand to indicate future actions, such as inserting or moving. The human decides. The robot executes. As a result, nearly 80 percent of the cutoffs introduced are integrated into the final structure.
What’s more is that the system is continually evolving, e.g., to integrate mechanical resistance calculations and the multiplication of robots to tackle larger structures. “In construction, work is often done by teams. The system can now be used by several people at the same time,” says Skevaki. The next step is to build a small pavilion.
