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Development of an Experimental Platform for Architectural-Scale Robotics: The Digital Construction Platform by Julian Leland Bell B.S., Engineering and Public Policy, Swarthmore College, 2012 Submitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology September 2017 2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. All rights reserved Signature of Author: .................................................................................................................... Department of Mechanical Engineering August 11th, 2017 Certified by: ................................................................................................................................. Neri Oxman Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences Thesis Co-Supervisor Certified by: ................................................................................................................................. David L. Trumper Professor of Mechanical Engineering Thesis Co-Supervisor Accepted by: ................................................................................................................................ Rohan Abeyaratne Professor of Mechanical Engineering Chairman, Committee on Graduate Students 1 2 Development of an Experimental Platform for Architectural-Scale Robotics: The Digital Construction Platform by Julian Leland Bell Submitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering on August 18, 2017 in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering Abstract This thesis describes the development and refinement of the second prototype of the Digital Construction Platform, or DCP. The DCP is a serial-link micro-macro manipulator robot intended for architectural-scale fabrication tasks, originally conceived of and presented by Keating in [1]. It is envisioned primarily as a platform for experimentation in automated construction, rather than as a closed, single-application system. In the work described here, a second prototype of the DCP – referred to as the DCP v.2 – was developed over two distinct periods. During the first period, from September 2015 through August 2016, the DCP v.2 system was assembled and a basic command and control architecture was developed to operate it. A series of experiments were conducted to examine the system’s performance, including pose repeatability testing in accordance with the ISO 9283-1998 robot performance characterization standard; and the fabrication of an architectural-scale dome structure from spray polyurethane foam. During the second period, from September 2016 through August 2016, the DCP v.2 system and command/control architecture were modified in a variety of ways to improve performance, reliability, accessibility to new users, and adaptability to new tasks. These modifications included transition to a modular, hard-real-time control architecture; installation of additional sensor systems on the vehicle; and the refinement and standardization of the system’s toolpath generation architecture. The impact of this work was demonstrated through a second set of demonstrations, including large-scale light paintings leveraging the new control architecture’s capabilities; and re-characterization of the system’s ISO 9283 pose repeatability, demonstrating a 59% improvement in this metric. Thesis Co-Supervisor: Dr. Neri Oxman Title: Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, Program in Media Arts and Sciences Thesis Co-Supervisor: Dr. David Trumper Title: Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering 3 Acknowledgements My path through this project begins with the DCP team. Steve Keating is the original inventor of the DCP and Print-in-Place concepts – basically, all the really good ideas here – and led the DCP project through August 2016. It is thanks to him that I have had the opportunity to be a part of this incredible project, and to help turn these visions into reality: I am deeply grateful. Along the way, many other people have lent their talents to the project, including Levi Cai, Selam Gano, John Zhang, Barrak Darweesh, Owen Trueblood, Damien Martin, and Grant Sellers. Thank you all for your help, patience, guidance and good humour. Second, I would like to acknowledge my advisors: Dr. Neri Oxman and Dr. David Trumper. In coming to MIT, I wanted to grow as an engineer, but also to reach beyond my discipline in my work. The two of you have made this possible, enabling me to pursue a mechanical engineering degree while working on the DCP project, and providing equal parts technical rigor and multidisciplinary grace in your mentorship. It has been an honor to learn from each of you. The Mediated Matter Group has also played an instrumental role in helping me develop beyond being “just an engineer.” I doubt I will ever again have the opportunity to surround myself with such intellectual diversity, and I cannot thank you all enough for inviting me to be a part of this rare team. MIT is much more than just students and professors. I would particularly like to thank the many shop masters I have bothered over the past two years, including John DiFrancesco and Tom Lutz at the Media Lab shop; Tara Fadenrecht at the DMSE shop; Mark Belanger at Edgerton; and Jen O’Brien at the Architecture shop. Additionally, as with any large institution there are a small set of people at MIT who do a huge amount to keep the entire operation running smoothly: Leslie Reagan in Mechanical Engineering, Keira Horowitz at the Media Lab, and the indomitable Kelly Donovan at Mediated Matter. Thank you all for your patience, help and kindness. A range of companies and organizations have helped make my work with the DCP possible through their support, including the following: - Altec, Inc.: I am particularly grateful to David Boger, whose persistent belief in our vision for the DCP has made realizing that vision possible. I would also like to thank the many Altec employees who have generously given their time to support our work, including Ali Khodadadi, Jessica Patel, Dan Nelson, Mike Whittaker, Jesse Thompson, and Tim Mourlam. 4 - Dow Chemical: Dow Chemical generously donated the FROTH-PAK™ spray foam insulation used in the dome print. I would like to particularly thank EJ Herst, Sven Claessens, and Ed Greer for their support in making this happen. - Autodesk: Finally, for the past year, the DCP has been housed at the Autodesk BUILD Space. I would like to thank Rick Rundell, BUILD Space mastermind, for giving me the opportunity to work in this amazing environment. I would also like to thank the incomparable BUILD Space shop team for their support and kindness, including Adam Allard, Athena Moore, Taylor Tobin, Tim Brinkerhoff, Joe Aronis, and Josh Aigen. I have been lucky to have a team of wise engineers as mentors and advisors who have helped me get to – and through – MIT, including Dr. Faruq Siddiqui, Dr. Lynne Molter, Dr. Erik Cheever, Dr. Bill Townsend, Dave Wilkinson, and Scott Harris. Your counsel and support is invaluable, and I look to your example as I begin to mentor the next generation of engineers. From an early age, I was taught that education is beyond value. Thanks to the hard work and sacrifice of my parents and grandparents, I have had the privilege to learn at some of the finest institutions in the world, for which I cannot overstate my gratitude. I am particularly grateful to my parents, Annette and Jonathan Leland, who have always given me their unwavering support throughout my educational journey. Finally, to my wife, Avery Davis Bell. The life we continue to build together is my finest project, and I could not ask for a better partner to build it with. 5 Author’s Note This thesis has turned out to be quite long, which I think is unfortunately more of a reflection of my limitations as a writer than the magnitude of my contributions. However, this length allows for a corresponding degree of detail to describe the work I have done on the Digital Construction Platform (DCP). Particularly for a project where my primary objective has been to provide a tool that others can use, my hope is that this detail will prove useful for future users and developers of the DCP system. In light of this, there are two ways this thesis may be read: - For the reader who is interested in learning about the DCP and its contributions to the field of automated construction, I recommend reading Chapter 1, followed by the System Implementations sections in Chapters 2 and 3. This provides a brief review of the history of automated construction as well as the early development of the DCP concept; followed by detailed descriptions of the tasks the DCP v.2 system has been used for. The reader may also wish to refer to [2] and [3] for further information about the project and its history. - Future users of the DCP v.2 platform are advised to skip directly to Chapter 3, and use it as a guide to explore the dcpctrl_v2 repository, which hosts the DCP’s software architecture. Other sections of this thesis may be useful as reference sources, but this chapter contains the material most relevant to the DCP as it exists in August 2017. I hope that this is helpful. This thesis was formatted using the LaTeX 7 template by Sebastian Nilsson [4]. 6 Dedicated to the memory of my grandfather, Benjamin Towne Leland, engineer, aviator and eternally curious mechanical mind, who would have thought this project was pretty nifty. 7 Table

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