Open Source Robotic Fabrication with COMPAS FAB

Architecture and Digital Fabrication in the age of robotics requires juggling with a toolchain spanning very different skills ranging from the creative aspects of design to the engineering needs of software and hardware development. In this session, we will present an open source framework in python that aims at streamlining these workflows, lowering the barrier of entry to robotics and enabling architects and designers to access state-of-the-art robotics tooling from within the parametric design environment.

Weitere Informationen

Robots are everywhere and they are a hugely versatile tool for digital fabrication. However, their toolchains are usually closed/proprietary, and the knowledge required to operate them is reserved to experts.

Additionally, digital fabrication projects involve multiple fields of knowledge that sometimes don’t play well together.

We believe in open source as the fundamental mechanism to democratize the expert knowledge required to use robots, lowering the barrier of entry and enabling designers, architects and makers to interact with advanced tools.

In this session, we will introduce participants to the COMPAS framework, provide an overview of robotics fundamentals and focus on the design and planning of robotic fabrication processes using COMPAS FAB and ROS, the Robot Operating System.

Ablauf der Session

1. Introduce the COMPAS framework.
2. Understand fundamentals of robotics, coordinate systems, transformations and orientation representations.
3. Learn forward and inverse kinematic functions and their application.
4. Learn Cartesian and kinematic robot planning methods
5. Apply these concepts to design and implement digital fabrication processes.
6. Gain an understanding of different robot control methods and their application.

Zielgruppe

Everyone interested in digital fabrication, product design, architecture, making and digital crafting are welcomed to join!

We will be using Python, so familiarity with it is recommendable, although not required.

Träger-Organisation

ETH Zurich, Gramazio Kohler Research
https://gramaziokohler.arch.ethz.ch/
casas@arch.ethz.ch