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UCLA Architectural Program Teaches Design for Robot Homes
Lucas123 writes: "UCLA has created a graduate-level program that teaches architects how to design intelligent robotic buildings that are able to change their configuration to adapt to their owners' needs. The design are not limited to homes, of course, and could be used in office buildings or hotels. For example, a hotel could switch out a small bathroom in a guest room for a larger one that comes to the room along the outside façade of the building. Factories could also be transformed based on changing needs. Students in the program are working to come up with a more dynamic building, possibly one that has moving platforms or walls that could adapt the building for manufacturing different sized aircraft or products."
Seems like some out the movie CUBE
Someone has to design those too.
I recommend reading the Christopher Alexander Books: "The Timeless Way of Building", "A Pattern Language", etc.
These are the books that the Gang of Four read that inspired the software design patterns movement. So there's that tie in.
But the other reason to read them is to encounter an entirely different philosophy about why and how to build things.
So while the geek in me reacts to this headline with, "cool! Moving walls that reconfigure themselves! How efficient", the part of me that has read Alexander asks some questions:
How will this make users of the building feel?
Is ease of reconfiguration the most important design quality in a space?
How will it impact people when the space they live and work in changes overnight?
Also, don't read the Alexander books if you've just changed house. You'll walk around your new place frustrated at all of the faults you didn't know were faults :)
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
"Think about how much space you need in a typical house today, and how much of it you use at a given time," Olds said. "If the house could dynamically reconfigure itself to match your daily routine, you could find yourself being much happier in less space and using less energy. For example, a room could be configured as an office during the day, with a media wall that is used as a business display. But at night, it could be a living room, and then it could transform into a bedroom."
But much of the rest of the world outside the US has much smaller houses already. People here have massive houses not because they need to but because they apparently want to. This is especially true in the suburbs where the rooms are often much larger than they need to accomplish their goals. Large houses are status symbols and the size of American houses has little connection to what is practically necessary. Maybe this might work better in Europe or if it were restricted in the US to urban centers? The article also acknowledges problems with other ideas, such as how they discuss modular bathrooms but then acknowledge that getting all the pipes and the like to fit would be difficult. And nothing here even begins to touch on the many issues there would be with building codes.
They still haven't figured out how to build a home you can get a couch, fridge, or other appliances into without needing 4 guys and lots of padding on the walls.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
If you can jump from moving platform to moving platform while avoiding these walls, you might be able to save the princess.
I've noticed a tendency recently of adjectives being pared down to adjectival nouns. At first it was just Republican politicians talking about the the "Democrat Party", but it seems to have spread all over the place. I was at truck stop last year which boasted "artisan egg breakfast sandwiches"; my reaction was that I'd rather take the artisan egg home and see what hatched out.
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We have trouble making buildings whose internal components like elevators and water pumps last more than a decade before failing. Most of our buildings don't look like they'll last more than 3-4 decades.
The real robotics we're going to put into buildings is smart utilities that track people, sense needs, respond to emergencies and maintain a comfortable environment. In addition, as we overpopulate and thus pollute to toxic levels, they're going to filter all air and water so their occupants don't die of rapid growth cancers.
Futurist Traditionalism
Points to the first architect who calls the control program GLaDOS.
The article says "factories are static". In reality, only factories for long production runs are static. Many factories are constantly setting up production lines, running them for weeks or months, then reconfiguring for a different product. This is expensive, slow, and often requires a completely different workforce than the one used during operation.
The ability to set up a production line with robots would be useful. One reason that production lines for smartphones are so manual is that the product life cycle is so short. The production engineering and plant setup time is long for a robotic assembly line. Faster line changeover would be a big win for fast-changing product lines.
One of the better robotics ideas of the 1980s was a pair of small, cooperating forklift-type robots. A pair of these could pick up and move a couch much bigger than the robots. It's time to revive that idea.
If microsoft software ran all of these building changes it would bring a new meaning to the phrase "blue screen of death" - falling out of the building when a wall accidentally opens up or getting crushed by a moving toilet
They made a movie about one of these homes called The Cube. When I get a Cube of my own, I would love to have my in-laws come to the housewarming party.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Sorry for posting this off-topic but there is no other place to post this, so...
The mobile site:
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Breaking news! Now, just added!!! "popover" ads that won't go away!!!
I had an obnoxious ad for a survey overlay the site. Won't close.
In desperation, I even clicked on it to take the survey (and entered bogus information to screw up their responses) but still the ad won't go away!
(I'm using Chrome browser on Nexus7... if that makes any difference).
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"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
For example, a hotel could switch out a small bathroom in a guest room for a larger one that comes to the room along the outside facade of the building.
Giving new meaning to the words "Porta-Potty."
If you think that is the image the four star hotel wants to project, think again. The mechanical complexities make the idea insane. You will need cranes and tracks. Earthquake rated anchorage, Perfect-seal plumbing and electrics...
American homes are large because nowhere outside of Manhattan Island did population densities ever reach the levels you see in Europe and Asia. Building materials remain readily available and economies of scale and efficiencies in distribution make them affordable.
You don't need the McMansion to live comfortably.
More importantly, Americans ultimately rebel against the compression and confinement of the big city.
In popular culture, the Kramdens remain trapped in a cold water flat, the Ricardos, with greater resources, begin travelling widely and ultimately settle down in suburban Connecticut --- following the path pioneered by their real-life middle class audience.
I particularly like the idea of an on-demand bathroom, that crawls around the outside of a building... the many security cameras within the building are constantly monitoring your pulse and other health related data - when it looks like you will need to go to the restroom soon the bathroom moves to your location and a portal opens silently beside you, your embedded smart arm implant beckoning you to take a leak while the matter is not yet urgent.
That, and robots that forcibly stuff a cat inside themselves to a waiting litter box if it seems like the cat is about to pee on anything.
There is no limit to the awesomeness possible when restroom needs are magically met.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Simply place this weighted cube on the button and open the door to your expanded bathroom! Your house will record your progress... for science. Mind the gap.
IAAA. Forget robots, Warner Sobek's R129 house is genius.
Check it out in the PBS e^2 series, part 6/6, at 20:07.
Back up to 18:55 to see the beginning of Sobek's ideas.
Watch the whole series if you have the time.
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