Spontaneous Tensegrity: Exploring Improvisational Design and Robotic Fabrication in Tensegrity Structures

Abstract Over the last two decades, significant progress has been made in multi-robot systems (MRS) and human-robot interaction (HRI). In architectural applications, however, robots have mainly served as fabrication tools rather than design collaborators. Integrating robots into design and fabrication processes can yield numerous advantages, including enhanced adaptability at dynamic construction sites and more efficient and creative construction processes. This paper showcases how robots can cooperate with humans through visual computing to design and build X-module and T3-prism tensegrity structures. Instead of following predefined blueprints, the human-robot team relies on generalized procedures and spontaneous decisions, resulting in greater flexibility and an expanded design space. The experiments include: 1) Employing stigmergic mechanisms and visual servoing for robots to adapt to structural changes and human interventions during the fabrication of an X-module tensegrity structure. 2) Incorporating so-called robot design preferences to influence the final form of a T3-prism tensegrity structure. Audio feedback and direct human-robot interactions, such as material handling, make the robotic fabrication process more user-friendly and intuitive for human designers. The presented prototypes illustrate how robots can autonomously adjust during fabrication, promoting collective decision-making between robots and humans in the design process. The paper’s contributions encompass four key aspects: 1) a novel robotic end effector design for manipulating X-module and T3-prism tensegrity modules; 2) a computationally inexpensive visual servoing method for robotic arms to track and interact with building elements; 3) human-in-the-loop improvisational workflows for the design and fabrication of tensegrity structures; 4) proof-of-concept prototypes.