noMad

The Architectural Association, AA School of Architecture, London

Project idea

Work is based on modular robotic ideology and seeks for its appliance in architecture. noMad is the architectural behavioral assembly system that has attributes of autonomy, mobility, ability to communicate and make decisions. This research is not about one finite result but rather uncountable amount of variations, about approach how to create any space and adopt it to changing conditions without influence from outside and control by human.

Project description

noMad system is a set of equal elements that are able to transform, move, recognize neighbors and attach to other same modules. Being granted with trivial AI, eventually modules form large connected populations where emergent attributes and swarm intelligence appear, which is significantly higher intelligence level than just a sum of all the individual parts.

Project’s authors visited leading world labs [in Cornell University, MIT] focused on modular robotics design aiming to understand new researches and their structure, and to apply existed scientific developments more reasonably and purposefully.

Technical information

all the technical info is described in video https://vimeo.com/aranchii/nomad which contains not only kinematic animations and computer simulations but also video of real noMad prototypes.

Nevetheles, the noMad project geometry has not yet been used by modular robotics scientists. Distinguishing feature is a transformation of the module from octahedron to icosahedron and cuboctahedron and then all the sequence back. This movement, translation of neighboring modules with simultaneous rotation, provides certain uniqueness and charm to the system.

It has to be admitted that the proportion of active (transforming) and passive (transported) modules is about 1/4 .. 1/3. Thus there is 20-33 per cent of actives in the system that allows its complete functioning, resource and energy saving used for manufacturing and functioning of transforming elements.

Co-authors

Paul Bart [Germany], Yuqiu Jiang [China], Flavia Santos [Brazil]