Alongside my ‘Curved Folding‘ research with RoboFold, I also worked on a series of parametric tools that simulate brick stacking, to enable the assembly of non-uniform brick walls with robots.

First the geometry for the wall is established, after this I extract the following data for each brick: XYZ position, rotation, position in the sequence, spacing to the next brick, and so on. From this a single movement path is generated that jumps between the orthogonal stack and the curved wall. This path incorporates vertical pick-up and put-down movements that ensure the placement of each brick does not disturb those around it. The path is used to position the robot through inverse kinematics. When the wall geometry is altered, the entire parametric definition automatically updates.

All code in GH+Python.

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Brick Sequencing – Wall geometry defined through Python scripts. Robots controlled through parametric model in Rhino, Grasshopper and Lobster.

Finished Stacking Process.

Convex Hull Analysis to Determine Robot Working Envelope.

Initial Test Animations

Software interface