Master's Thesis Award Winners 2020

Working with Uncertainties: An adaptive fabrication system for bamboo structures utilizing computer vision

Yue Qi und Ruqing Zhong

Supervisors: Achim Menges, Alexander Verl
Tutors: Hans Jakob Wagner, Yasaman Tahouni, Benjamin Kaiser

The group investigates an adaptive fabrication system that is able to work with cumulative deviations. During fabrication, the deviation can be caused by material- and fabrication-related uncertainties. All these factors exist in the bamboo constructions significantly, which limits the application of this high performance and sustainable material. To address the challenge, the proposed method leverages vision-based feedback to update future fabrication instructions and provide guidance for manual assembly, thereby compensating for the error in every iteration of the building process. This workflow effectively improves the accuracy of manually fabricated structure with natural imperfect material, allowing it to predictably interface with prefabricated building components.