Karen Lee Bar-Sinai

Project title: Towards Environmental Robotics: Land-Forming of Acoustic Urban Grounds Using Robotic Tools

Host Institution: Technical University of Munich (TUM)

Host Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Benedikt Boucsein

Co-host Institution: Technion – Israel Institute of Technology

Co-host Supervisor: Dr. Amir Degani

Summary project: Accurate robotic tools can extend digital fabrication beyond factory walls to shape environments and embed performance in their design. By modulating soil on-site, robotic tools can restore the link between construction, site, and material availability. Restoring this link, which defined the construction of the first global societies, can promote a circular economy in construction at large. Although researchers begin to explore the shaping of landscapes using robotic tools for addressing environmental challenges, explorations are preliminary. The project proposes to rely on, combine and expand three research fields – urban design, digital landscape architecture, and field robotics, to explore environmental-oriented robotic construction at an urban scale. In this context, the project objective is (1) to develop a performance-based landscape design for mitigating noise through the modulation and forming of acoustic grounds, (2) to explore the formation of acoustic grounds using collective robotic tools. While embedding acoustic performance in wall tiles using robotic tools was tested in architecture, the coupling of landscape design, acoustic performance, and robotic tools has not been explored. This project be explored through the Munich urban airport case study. Thereby, the project aims to contribute a novel, inter-disciplinary methodology for implementing performative landscape design using robotic tools – environmental-scale robotics.