Keith Evan Green (Architecture) and Ian Walker (ECE)
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Course Cross-Listing:
ARCH 879 (requires approval of instructor)

Description
A 3-credit course focused on understanding, developing and testing robotic systems for the built environment. Collaborative teams of students from Architecture and Electrical and Computer Engineering (and their allied fields in AAH and CoES) will develop working robotic prototypes responsive to challenges and opportunities of living in the built and natural environments today.

“Architectural Robotics”
While Information Technology [IT] can intelligently manipulate digital bits within building surfaces or temperature-controlled air through building interiors, embedded IT could intelligently move mass to create an adaptive, physical-digital built environment. The prospect of such an “Architectural Robotics” was anticipated by architect and MIT Media Lab founder Nicholas Negroponte thirty years ago in his vision of “…a man-made environment that responds to and is ‘meaningful’ for him or her” [5].

Wired editor Kevin Kelly has since imagined a “world of mutating buildings” and “rooms stuffed with co-evolutionary furniture” [3]. And while Bill Gates envisions “a robot in every home,” [2] William J. Mitchell, former Dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, sees homes “as robots for living in” [4]. Internet links to a sampling of recent activities in the emerging area of architectural robotics are offered at the close of this syllabus.

Current research in robotics, including modular self-reconfigurable robots, heralds more significant changes in the built environment. Architectural Robotics raises questions such as: How will we program buildings?How will buildings recognize activities taking place inside (e.g., sensor fusion)? and How will designers, including end-users, associate activities with desired building configurations?

In designing buildings, architects typically anticipate in the form and function of these buildings how people will inhabit them and how these buildings will respond to a range of possible, local conditions. In designing Architectural Robotics, however, there is a fundamental difference: investigators are engineering a responsive system that actively engages and interacts with inhabitants and local conditions in real time. So, unlike a conventional building which has a very limited range of responses to dynamic, changing conditions, an Architectural Robotics is bound together with its users and local conditions in a designed performance.

Architectural Robotics must go beyond simplistic formal achievements; it must instead explore ways for improving life, enhancing existing places, and supporting human interaction. This is no utopian dream in which technology or architecture transforms completely our everyday reality. Instead, architecture and technology – particularly, an Architecture-Robot hybrid – must support human activity, respond naturally, and perform according to our needs and wants. Architectural Robotics, when employed, must also complement and redefine our urban living patterns. Answers to life problems and opportunities will come not from computational or robotic solutions alone, but through the way these technologies, embedded in the built environment, help forward the interaction among people and their surroundings to create places of social and psychological significance. For philosopher Andrew Feenberg, “technology is not simply a means but has become an environment, a way of life” [1]. An Architectural Robotics is more than an aesthetic search, a stylistic possibility, or a technological quest; it is, instead, a way to develop new spatial patterns in support of human activities. This course in “Architectural Robotics” aims to cultivate new vocabularies of design and new, complex realms of understanding towards novel, human-centered design propositions.

[1] Feenberg, A. Transforming Technology, A Critical Theory Revisited (Oxford University Press, 2002), 8.
[2] Gates, B. “A Robot in Every Home,” Scientific American, December 16, 2006, http://scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?articleID=9310D12D-E7F2-99DF-3FA1568DCF374C60.
[3] Kelly, K. Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 1994), 472.
[4] Mitchell, W.J. e-topia ( Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 59.
[5] Negroponte, N. Soft Architecture Machine (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1975), X.

Aims and Objective of this Course
The gradual embedding of robotics throughout the built environment will have a broad impact on society as these technologies support and, in some cases, augment everyday work, school, entertainment, and leisure. 

The objective of this course is to identify and investigate opportunities and challenges in the emerging field of robotics technologies embedded in the built environment.

Through discussions and collaborative research activities, this course aims to cultivate an understanding of how new technologies and human-centric design methodologies can be applied to improve traditional complex systems such as intelligent physical environments. More broadly, this course aims to cultivate new vocabularies of design and new ways in which complex engineered systems can be designed to respond to human needs and wants.

Structure of the Course
Class sessions consist of [1] lecture presentations and class discussions following assigned readings; [2] labs focused on developing architectural robotic projects.

Required Materials
Each student will be required to purchase an Arduino Experimentation Kit - ARDX - v1.0 (www.adafruit.com and other retailers linked below) at approximately $85.00 per kit. The lab otherwise will provide the many add-ons (motors, sensors, lighting, …) for prototyping the assignments apart from consumables like sheet cardboard, plastic, wood.

Readings
• There is one book required for this course (order immediately): Lisa Nocks. The Robot: The Life Story of a Technology. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008 (under $20). All other required readings are found at "course documents" link at top-right of this page.

• Useful but not required books for this course:
> Banzi, Massimo. Getting Started with Arduino. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly, 2009.
[Note: A "beta version of this doument is available at the link below.]
> O’Sullivan, D. and Igoe, T. Physical Computing: Sensing and Controlling the World with Computers. Cambridge, MA: Thomson, 2004. [more info at Course Documents]
> Igo, Tom. Making Things Talk: Practical Methods for Connecting Physical Objects. Cambridge, UK: Make Books / O’Reilly, 2007.

On Line Resources
FOR DEVELOPING ARCHITECTURAL ROBOTICS / ARDUINO PROGRAMMING
• http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage
> Arduino Home Page
• itu.dk/people/sokoler/workshop/ProgrammingBooklet.pdf [cut and paste into browser]
> Evans, Brian, W. Arduino Programming Notebook [pdf download].
• webzone.k3.mah.se/projects/lab/Folder/index.aspx?file=32&function=text [cut and paste into browser]]
> Getting Started with Arduino - Massimo Banzi [pdf download]
• http://www.pdf-search-engine.com/arduino-pdf.html [and select “Bionic Ardiuno”]
> “Bionic Arudino” [tutorial; download from list]
• http://www.potemkin.org/cms/Pid/Craft
> “The Craft of Interactive Prototyping”

FOR ARDUINO BLOGS
• http://www.upwardnotnorthward.com/ - Upward Not Northward
• http://todbot.com/blog/category/arduino/ - TodBot

FOR ON-LINE RETAILERS / WHERE TO BUY HARDWARE FOR ASSIGNMENTS
• http://www.adafruit.com/ - Adafruit
• https://www.jameco.com - JameCo
• http://www.mcmaster.com/ - McMaster-Carr
• http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/categories.php - SparkFun
• http://www.roboticsconnection.com/ - Robotics Connection
• http://www.makershed.com/ - Maker Shed
• Little Bird Electronics, Modern Device, NKC Electronics, Gravitech, RepRap Stor, RobotShop, Liquidware

FOR “ARCHITECTURAL ROBOTICS”
• http://code.arc.cmu.edu/lab/html/projects.html#projects_architectural_robotics;
http://code.arc.cmu.edu/~mdg/ArchiBots07/architectural%20robotics%20%2707.html
• http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~cboo/Archibot.html
> websites from architectural robotics investigator and Workshop PI Mark Gross, CMU
• http://www.imsa-research.org/
> a website from architectural robotics investigator and Workship PI Keith Evan Green, Clemson University
• http://robotic-ecologies.blogspot.com/
> a blog on architectural robotics from Jason Johnson, University of Virginia
• http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=2941
> an article in Metropolis on an architectural robotics course
• http://cva.ap.buffalo.edu/#
> a website on architectural robotics at SUNY Buffalo
• http://www.interactivearchitecture.org/
> a blog on architectural robotics from the Bartlett School of Architecture, London
• http://www.readthehook.com/stories/2007/05/24/ONARCH-0621-B.rtf.aspx
> an article on the application of robotics to architecture
• http://www.orambra.com
> a website of architectural robotics investigator Tristan d’Estree Sterk
• http://robotecture.com/
> a website from architectural robotics investigator Michael Fox, Cal Poly Pomona
• http://www.robotecture.com/kdg/
> a website from the Kinetic Design group, MIT
• http://www.protospace.bk.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=ee8041d7-2296-4ffd-abe4-ca76045c0b7b&lang=en
> a website on architectural robotics at TU Delft
• http://www.thelivingnewyork.com/
> a website from architectural robotics investigators David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang, Columbia University
• http://musclesfrombrussels.blogspot.com/
> a blog showing the development of a muscle-tower at MIT
• http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/Labs/Labs
> ITP Physical Computing Program at NYU

Evaluation
For each of three design assignments student pairs – one architect, one engineer – will demo a working “architectural robotic” environment and provide its documentation (as described in the next section).

Throughout this course – an intimate and intensive “conversation” between students and faculty members – students will have ample opportunity to receive feedback on their work. Students will receive a grade in response to the work presented and documented, weighted as follows:

• (10%) class participation
• (10%) assignment-1 (e.g. an archibot to cultivate creativity in children)
• (20%) assignment-2 (e.g. an archibot for emergency relief in cities)
• (40%) assignment-3 (e.g. an archibot to support aging in place)
• (10%) presentation of assignments 1-3 which includes images, diagrams, physical and digital models, animations, videos and references where necessary to communicate the intent.
• (10%) documentation of all assignments on a CD.

There are two necessary requirements for each of the assignments: firstly, your demo must employ at least one sensor that actuates one or more motors as well as lighting and/or a display; and secondly, your demo must “move mass” to alter, spatially, the environment. The first requirement is simpler, the second, less tangible. Indeed, we know that since Descartes, great minds in philosophy, mathematics and across the social and natural sciences strain to characterize the very concept of “space.” We ask that your demos be spatial: that enclosures, structural systems, physical boundaries, and/or key contents (e.g. furniture) of a local environment “morph” (e.g. fold, bend, twist, undulate, elevate, incline, rotate, close, contract, soften, swell, breathe …) in response to at least one phenomenon detected by one or more sensors. In this way, architecture (or more broadly, the built environment) is a dynamic system comprised of physical matter, digital information, inhabitants and other living things in motion.

Documenting Your Work
You are required to document all your work for this course in digital format, employing a digital camera, scanner, and direct transfer of digital files. Digital documentation for each assignment consists of three parts:

[1] a Word document with:
• the name of your project;
• the URL of your video posted on YouTube (obviously, you need to post in on YouTube)
• an abstract of less than 100 words describing the project;
• a scenario describing how people engage your project (e.g. “On a windy March afternoon, Sandy discovers near the boardwalk next to the dune “Roboshield,” an intelligent, morphing …”;
• a list of hardware you used;
• the code;
• a discussion of your demo, including its promise, how you might build on what you accomplished, and problems you encountered (and how you overcame them, if you did).

[2] a minimum of three still (digital camera) images of the project saved in .jpg format at both 72dpi and 300dpi resolutions.

[3] a video of less than 3 minutes playable on a Windows PC. If the video is more than 8MB, please include a second copy in a file size no more than about 8MB. An 8MB small-frame / higher-resolution video is better to post on our website than an 8MB large-frame / lower-resolution.

One week precisely from the date and time students make their final class presentations, the class will meet in the lab for a lab clean-up session and, at that time, provide the instructors with two identical copies of the CD (or of CDs, as required. Please work together as a class to burn the fewest number of CDs required to collect together all the assignments from all class members, saved as readable on any standard PC-formatted computer. Prepare a cover for the CDs with your names, term, and a tiny image and title representing each of the proposals for our final assignment of the semester. Create file folders on the disk for each assignment by team, labeled with your names, where all your documents for that assignment are placed. These disks will be examined, upon submission in the lab, to make certain all documents are viewable and complete and fully demonstrate your concept. No grade will be assigned for this course without acceptable CDs, and the preparation and completeness of the CD itself are valued at 10% of your final grade.

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