Using Forge Toward Human-Robot Collaboration in Architecture

This class will present a toolset for enabling and enhancing Human and Robot Collaborative for the building sector. A specific case study, “Collaborative Robotic Workbench”, developed for the Kuka Innovation Award 2018, will illustrate several techniques in generative design, communication protocols, and interfaces for enabling a human and robot collaborative building process. This workbench featured an augmented reality interface for superimposing data and dispatching tasks to the robot, a background computational engine for task distribution and path planning, and an online web platform for process visualization using Forge APIs. The class will provide an overview of the various system components and explain how they facilitated a collaborative construction process - going into particular depth on the communication between a ROS server managing the robotic process and a Forge viewer web client that enables remote monitoring of the construction process in real time.