Human-cyber-physical system for post-digital design and construction of lightweight timber structures

Abstract

Current digital design-to-build workflows are limited to distinct tasks and pre-programmed machine operations, and the lack of system adaptability makes it difficult to accommodate non-linear construction processes and unexpected incidents. This work questions how to address humanization in post-digital architectural practices in order to increase workflow flexibility. Taking a lightweight timber structure as a demonstrator, this work describes its design-to-build procedure embracing the idea of the human-cyber-physical system (HCPS). The complex structural geometry was realized through the combination of computational form-finding method, human-guided robotic fabrication, and mixed reality (MR)-aided assembly and analysis. The human-in-the-loop workflow discussed in this work enables bidirectional communication between the virtual and the actual, and suggests humans' intuitive intervention in the design materialization processes. Future research will focus on human augmentation in full-scale architectural practices concerning novel human-robot interactions with more accurate sensing and gesture-tracking methods.