Robotic, shape-changing room developed

Scientists have developed a robotic origami-style room that can change its shape and environment in response to human behaviour.

The interactive Centaur Pod will adapt to external environmental and human stimuli by moving up and down and changing its shape, according Hank Haeusler, associate professor at University of New South Wales in Australia.

"At the moment, a human can be in the same space as a robot and can interact in the space with the robot, but what we want to do is make space itself become the robot," said Haeusler.

"Thus when a person in a building moves, behaves or operates in any way, the 'robot' will sense this behaviour and starts learning from this behaviour and other people's behaviour and will create knowledge from the behaviour and the knowledge will translate into the space to change," he said.

"We're looking at how digital fabrication and robot fabrication could shape the way we build buildings," he added.

The real-world research project explores three main areas that Haeusler said will profoundly change the way architects design, develop and manufacture in the future: machine learning and artificial intelligence; digital fabrication and robot fabrication; and augmented reality and virtual reality.

"We try to push as much as possible the boundaries of conventional architecture and design, and explore what machine learning, biomimicry or creative robotics have to offer for spatial design to use this knowledge as seed to develop architectural design projects," Haeusler said.