Parawood: Framework for on-site Robotic Timber Fabrication

Since 1980, industrial robotic arms have been explored for their potential to revolutionise the construction industry - a potential that was uncovered from the effects of implementing robotic arms in manufacturing industries, such as the car industry. Within this profession, dramatic improvements in production efficiencies and lowering of costs were observed. However, the challenge in unlocking this potential within construction could be the contrasting fabrication environment and task space; Exemplified by how car manufacturing is carried out in controlled and known factories, enabling to make copies of cars efficiently. In contrast to this, construction is performed outside at different sites, at times in an ad-hoc fashion, and very rarely are the construction tasks identical.
Mitigating this challenge is the subject of this industrial PhD project, “Parawood: Framework for On-site Robotic Timber Fabrication”, carried out in close collaboration with the industry partner; Odico Construction Robotics. Odico has developed a transportable robotic fabrication concept, Factory-on-the-Fly (FotF), which this project aims to extend with new processing capabilities and instruction methods. The FotF system is a closed envelope (trailer or container) containing an industrial robot arm and a unique robotic work environment for manufacturing tasks. Instructions for the tasks are given through a software app on a tablet that configures fabrication actions for element(s). Odico’s aim in developing such a system is to improve the work environment for onsite workers while improving construction efficiency.
This research is focused towards developing a solution that can assist carpenters' on-site practices, which is a construction process commonly carried out on-site. However, equipping carpenters with a robotic solution presents two challenges; 1) how can carpenters, who are usually robotic non-specialists, best instruct fabrication information, and 2) how could the robot fabricate elements that support carpenters' current practice? Thus, the project is approached from the position of the construction site, where it is explored how robotics can be intuitively used by robotic non-specialists while identifying a use-case and corresponding robotic work environment for on-site robotic timber manufacturing.
Consequently, the research develops two trajectories of equal importance that cover 1) ways in which robotic fabrication can benefit on-site practice; and 2) how ad-hoc fabrication information can be instructed to a robotic system by non-specialists.
Despite the FotF system having a method to instruct robotic actions, it can be challenged by unplanned ad-hoc fabrication requirements. Therefore, this research proposes to augment the FotF software framework with new software functionalities that allow operators to develop fabrication instructions based on physical drawings. Thus, if a challenging fabrication task arises, it is possible to create the fabrication instruction through physical drawings or markings on a workpiece. In conjunction with enabling such an intuitive instruction method, the research discusses built demonstrators that contribute to a better understanding of how FotF systems could benefit the onsite processes for carpentry, which incidentally also led to the proposal of a new timber FotF unit for Odico in 2022.

Short note: This thesis has been developed as a “PHD-by-publication” and is therefore presented as two books, namely, a first book that comprises the PhD structures, aims, background, methods and a summary of the findings across the published papers, and a second book II that contains a series of papers published using the framework of book I.