In-situ Fabricator, autonomous construction robot, NCCR Digital Fabrication, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

This first video of the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) Digital Fabrication features interviews with the president of ETH Zurich and the leading researchers of the "In-situ Fabricator". This autonomous mobile construction robot shall allow the seamless combination of the digital design with the physical fabrication process directly on the construction site.
The NCCR Digital Fabrication combines researchers from the fields of architecture, robotics, engineering, materials and computer science. Together, they are working to extend the potential of digital fabrication into the field of architecture.

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The "In-situ Fabricator" is a autonomous construction robot, that shall enable digital fabrication directly on the construction site.

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Automation of a discrete robotic fabrication process using an autonomous mobile robot

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Researchers from Switzerland's ETH Zurich university will use robots and 3D printers to design and build a pioneering three-storey house at a local research and innovation campus.

Eight professors from ETH Zurich are working with business partners to build the DFAB House, which the team claims will be "the first house in the world to be designed, planned and built using predominantly digital processes".

The aim of DFAB House is to allow the team to test new building and energy technologies under real-life conditions. These include the robotically fabricated mesh-moulding process, which is the first to make the transition from research to usable architectural application.

"Unlike construction projects that use only a single digital building technology, such as 3D-printed houses, the DFAB House brings a range of new digital building technologies together," said the project's initiator, ETH professor Matthias Kohler.

"This allows us to use the advantages of each individual method as well as their synergies, and express them architecturally."

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The Mesh Mould technology could fundamentally alter future construction with concrete by combining formwork and reinforcement into one robotically fabricated construction. The two-metre high construction robot In situ Fabricator plays a central role in the process. It moves autonomously on caterpillar tracks even in a constantly changing environment. A steel wire mesh fabricated by the robot serves both as formwork and as reinforcement for the concrete. Thanks to the dense structure of the steel wire mesh and the special composition of the concrete mix, the concrete stays inside the grid and does not pour out.

The result is a double-curved, load-bearing wall that will characterise the architecture of the DFAB HOUSE project at the Empa and Eawag NEST research and innovation construction site in Dübendorf.

Project credits:
The In situ Fabricator is a collaborative research project of Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich and the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zurich.

Mesh Mould is collaborative research project of Gramazio Kohler Research, ETH Zurich, the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, ETH Zurich, the Institute for Building Materials, ETH Zurich and the Institute of Structural Engineering, ETH Zurich

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