Incorporation of BIM in Autonomous Construction

Autonomous construction assembly and 3D printing of concrete are becoming promising technologies for building structures in the near future. However, such technologies require design professionals to optimize the building design for constructability constraints imposed by the robots and 3D-printed material parameters, in addition to traditional design criteria. Recent advances in generative design showcase promising potential to use BIM (Building Information Modeling) for optimizing the building design for multiple objectives. Pennsylvania State University participated in the NASA 3D-Printed Habitat challenge (for Mars), which had a virtual construction level focusing on using BIM for the design of a Martian habitat, and an actual construction level focusing on the autonomous construction of a subscaled version of the design. This class will demonstrate the underlying BIM process that our team developed to identify the optimal design and perform 4D simulation of the robotic construction process.