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DYNAMIC FREEFORM CONSTRUCTION STRUCTURES
Swarm Agents for
Constructing Homeostatic Structures
(SWARM)
Chimay Anumba, Li Bai, Edmund Burke, Richard Eastgate, Rupert
Soar, Scott Turner
Loughborough University, Nottingham University, State University of New
York |
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BACKGROUND
Freeform Construction will enable the construction process to be taken
to extraordinary levels. The
Homeostasis or TERMES Project
is demonstrating how complex, organic, structures can be
integrated into buildings to meet the challenges of energy conservation
and climate change. Though integrating complex structures into
buildings is almost the stuff of fiction, incredibly we can go even
further. By taking the
Deployable Freeform Construction
machines
one step further, we move towards a new objective. By devolving a
single mobile Freeform Construction machine down to 100’s or 1000’s of smaller Freeform Construction agents, not only can we enhance deployability, but we move to a system of
Collaborative Freeform Construction Agents (CFCA’s). Agents will move
from layer-by-layer construction methods to the collaborative methods
employed by termites to build self-regulating structures. Essentially
they will:
Construct a habitat.
Inhabit the structure.
Maintain all internal environmental conditions within stable equilibria.
Optimise the structure specifically for the inhabitants through
generation and degeneration of the structure and form.
Recycle and manage waste streams.
At
its core, lies a process known as stigmergy. Stigmergy has many
definitions, but essentially, complex structures emerge through the
seemingly un-coordinated work of many individual insects driven by
environmental cues triggered by pheromone dispersal. Pheromones are
scents, very similar to solvents, laid down by social insects during
activity. Being a solvent, pheromone evaporates at an exact rate,
matched precisely to a particular species of social insect and, more
importantly, matched to the speed at which they work. In the case of
the termites, whatever activity
is performed, it is always followed by the deposition of a pheromone, with
different pheromones being used for different tasks. Termites are tuned
to their environment and seek to modify their surrounding physical
conditions to what they perceive as ‘comfortable’. In the case of
construction, worker termites seek out to maintain a set of
environmental conditions which include moisture levels, CO2
and O2 concentrations, and in some species, temperature. If
the optimised structure changes, through, for example, damage, then they are
driven into action simply as a response to a change in the environment
(much in the same way you open a window). |
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OBJECTIVES
The
research assumes that mass-produced robotics are less than a decade away,
and is therefore tackling the challenge of having the behavioural
algorithms in place, which will result in the building of a dynamic
structure. Of key importance to this research, is how Macrotermes
termites produce such complex architectures from their combined actions
without any obvious global control mechanism. Deriving complexity from
seemingly simple individual behaviours is termed emergent
behaviour, which, put simply, results from
multiple causes that are more than the sum of its individual effects.
Considering the complexity and dynamics of
emergent construction, there are many issues to be addressed for the
application of CFCA’s in construction. One particularly important aspect
is the development of an agent’s learning and adaptive abilities.
The
simulations currently under development seek to answer the following
questions: Can swarm agents be given behaviours working together to
build a structure? Can swarm agents be programmed to adapt a structure
to meet the requirements of homeostatic functions?
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