Collaborative Winding: Robotic Collaboration (2020)

Collabrative Winding is a robotic research/ fabrication project that proposes a system that utilizes robotic weaving based on an object. This project was a collaboration with Nick Coppula.

This process required collaboration between two robots and was written in RAPID and HAL for grasshopper. The ABB 4400 robot moves the material to a position inside the frame and the ABB 6640 robot loops the material onto a fastening system on the exterior of the frame. This robotic collaboration enables the internal complexity of weaving while maintaining a regular external frame geometry, which is then expressed by repeatedly bringing numerous strands back to a set of fixed positions.

The project's form has a complex, spatial interior rather than a regulated exterior. This makes it distinct from many precedent projects which heavily rely on robotically woven structures aptly described as “shells”. The collaborators proposed a system of weaving that is adaptable and builds upon the existing formal language surrounding robotically woven structures. Inverted weaving was the development of an inside-out approach to weaving where the basic frame becomes external and the complexity becomes internal.