The Master in Robotics and Advanced Construction (MRAC) seeks to train a new generation of interdisciplinary professionals who are capable of facing our growing need for a more sustainable and optimised construction ecosystem. The Master is focused on the emerging design and market opportunities arising from novel robotic and advanced manufacturing systems.
Through a mixture of seminars, workshops, and studio projects, the master programme challenges the traditional processes in the Construction Sector. It investigates how advances in robotics and digital fabrication tools change the way we build and develop processes and design tools for such new production methods.
Col Ashwin – SITA (left) and Taisuke Minagawa (right) Col Ashwin – SITA Col Ashwin is a Senior Lead Enterprise Architect for the Barcelona SITA office and is originally from Kernow (Cornwall, UK). He has worked across the industry as an expert in Robotics, Open Source development, ROS development, Cybersecurity, Systems Engineering, and company compliance. … Read more
IAAC Workshop led by the Professorship of Digital Fabrication | Technical University of Munich Faculty: Begüm Saral, Avishek Das and Pit Siebenaler Design Goals and Process When designing with the bricks, we began looking at their imperfections. We thought about using and exposing these defects as part of the material’s architectural expression. The idea focused … Read more
The global construction industry currently faces a significant sustainability crisis, characterized by the massive generation of material waste that often bypasses recycling streams. This challenge stems primarily from a technological gap: the lack of real-time identification, sorting, and decision-making systems on active demolition sites. Without an efficient way to distinguish between various debris types, valuable … Read more
This article presents a project exploring how collected data can be processed and translated into automated classification and robotic decision-making logic. The core concept revolves around studying the physical condition and spatial arrangement of reclaimed construction material, extracting geometry-based and surface-level information to generate a data-driven sorting and retrieval workflow. By combining artificial intelligence with … Read more
RE:PAIR –Perception-Driven Closed-Loop Robotic Repair Faculty: Hamid Peiro and Aleksandra Kraeva (Sasha) Mission Statement: RE:PAIR is a perception-driven, decision-visible closed-loop robotic system that detects cracks, repairs them using robotic 3D printing, and autonomously verifies the result. 1) Crack detection 2) Segmentation and Masking 3) Centreline and points First we outlayed the workflow of the project. … Read more
Solutions for Rapid Data Acquisition in Disaster Scenarios This project explores a robotic perception pipeline designed to support post-disaster assessment and early response scenarios. The core objective is to detect and map cracks in damaged buildings using vision-based data, assisting rescue teams by providing spatial information about potentially unsafe areas. Rather than aiming for full … Read more
In the following blog post, we will analyse the development of the concept of our project carried out in Workshop 2.1. Team Collaborative Workflow and Modular System Development Guide, in which a Rotatory Gantry structure is proposed for the flip-type movement of a robotic arm. AIRFLIP – Rotary Gantry System for Small-Scale Cobots Overview The … Read more
Github : https://github.com/j-albo/robotic-3d-space-analysis INTRODUCTION Scanning irregular terrains with today’s scanning technology is crucial for obtaining precise environmental models, optimizing planning and execution in architectural projects. Its high-resolution capture capability allows for mapping complex surfaces and detecting floor level variations imperceptible to the human eye, improving efficiency and reducing errors in design and construction. WHY USING A MOBILE … Read more
“In the dawn of this new era, the construction industry stands at the threshold of transformation, poised to redefine its legacy through the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and comprehensive data analytics.”* This manifesto aims to put forward the benefits of AI and how it can help the The construction business be improved by collecting … Read more
The integration of a rover or swarm of rovers into construction demolition sites represents a paradigm shift in waste management practices. Equipped with advanced sensors and AI algorithms, this rover possesses the capability to accurately identify and segregate valuable materials such as steel and metal amidst debris and rubble. These rovers operate seamlessly alongside human … Read more
ROBOTIC SOLUTIONS FOR 3D SPACE ANALYSIS AIM This workshop ran in collaboration with Noumena and IAAC where we were introduced to a environmental scanning and data processing workflows which combined the use of photogrammetry and point-cloud data. The site of the study was at IAAC’s new building which is yet to be constructed. From this … Read more
Aim The project was aimed to develop a methodology to detect damages in walls with the help of Yolo’s trained models furthering to gain the quantitative and economic analysis of the development any project. Workflow Initially, we conducted a site scan using an RGB camera of Dji drone the site was mapped section by section … Read more
Aim The main objective is to generate a new formation of point cloud of the new IAAC building, that is inspired from a style (Artistic /Architectural) using AI / Machine learning and change the existing point cloud with the the new stylized point cloud. State of The Art Image-to-image translation is a class of vision … Read more
Context I-P_Maper(Intersection Point Mapper) is a project based on ROS and scanning. It mainly focuses on controlling the robot tool path to scan and get the data we want. Given the time constraints, we maximized our efforts and performed a series of tests in order to develop a program that could accurately identify up to … Read more
The construction industry creates a waste that is expected to reach 2.2 billion tons globally by 2025 (Transparency market research). Because of this the market started trying different new techniques to construct with less waste, that is how with the 4.0 industrial revolution came the Additive manufacturing process, that fabricates physical 3D objects layer by … Read more
During this Hardware seminar, we were able to understand different types of sensors used in robotics and the techniques used to process the collected data. The aim of the seminar is to use the sensors to understand the environment and then expect the robot to take decisions (automation) and carry a specific task (actuation). For … Read more
