Material Agencies: Robotics & Design Lab I: Part I

Catalog description

Material Agencies Section 1 is the half-semester introductory studio to the Master of Science in Design: Robotics and Autonomous Systems (MSD-RAS) program at the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design. This course will introduce students to the Robotic Lab through a software / hardware routine to engage the ABB IRB4600-60 6-axes industrial robot with a hot-wire foam cutting end effector. The studio focuses exclusively on working with an industrial robotic arm and a large-scale hot-wire cutter end-effector to cut foam. This relatively simple robotic extension quickly introduces students to the robotic lab, robot interface and ultimately produces tangible results quickly, yet also highlights the designer’s need to develop designs within geometrical constraints that are tightly related to specific manufacturing processes – in this case, the hot-wire cutter’s production of ruled surface geometries. Operating through ruled surface geometries enables the designer to have maximum control over the manufactured output whilst removing the need for post-design geometric rationalization or value engineering activities. The architectural project for the studio is a speculative ceilingscape re-design for one of the large galleries in Meyerson Hall that currently features a ubiquitous hung acoustical tile system.