RoboBlox Sustained was an installation showcased as part of the SHErobots: Ecologies of Care exhibition. The exhibition explored women who robot (she “robots,” a verb), using robotics within the broader context of ecologies, as multi-species and environmental entanglements, encompassing care for both humans and non-humans.
The exhibition was composed of three core themes: Strange Bodies, Systems Care, and Materialities Reset. Each showcased thought-provoking works that provide insight into our evolving understanding of these complex dynamics, with art videos, process videos, physical objects fabricated for and by robots, customised end effectors for robots, robot bodies, and origin stories of research, art, and design.
The RoboBlox Sustained installation showcased sustainable breeze blocks created via rule-based story-making. Through a continuous workflow from digital design to robotic fabrication, RoboBlox explores materiality by asking how we can utilise waste materials to create high value products, including investigations of material recipes based on local and agricultural waste materials.
The work emerged from an earlier research project on Remote Additive Manufacturing, which investigated remote robotic 3D printing of clay-based bio-materials to produce blocks with improved structural and environmental performance.
Using a UR10 collaborative robot, varying percentages of algae were combined with clay to explore the relationship between the percentage of algae in the mixture and the resulting structural integrity of the printed blocks. This material exploration was paired with an examination of diverse geometries inspired by biomimicry patterns, testing the proposition that the versatility of robotic 3D printing enhances material and geometric properties and optimises the use of bio-composites in construction.
A computational script was also developed. This provided a user-friendly augmented reality interface for designing blocks as well as controlling the robotic 3D printer that can be utilised by people with no or limited experience in the field.
Lead researchers | Müge Belek Fialho Teixeira, Glenda Caldwell, Jared Donovan, Frederico Fialho Teixeira, Maryam Shafiei, Ahmed Sakr |
Concept | Müge Belek Fialho Teixeira, Glenda Caldwell, Jared Donovan, Frederico Fialho |
Cinematography and video edit | Shuwei Zhang, Maryam Shafiei, Shabnam Lotfian |
Code | Müge Belek Fialho Teixeira, Jared Donovan, Ayman Wagdy, Maryam Shafiei |
Project partners | UQ Institute of Molecular Biosciences, QUT School of Architecture and Built Environment |
Materials | Blocks printed with clay, bagasse, fly ash, mill mud, mycelium, algae. Video, sound [11:56] |