From Bob the Builder to Baxter the Builder

Robotics in Architecture is a widely established research field with various notable scholarly contributions. Historically automobile manufactures have established the production and use of robot arms and have consequently had the most impact on the design of robot arms with their demands in mind. Thus one could argument that most robot arms were and are developed for an industry where the product comes to the tool in a fixed site. When translating this mode of production ‘product – tool – site’ to an architectural context one has to admit that the mode of production differs (site varies – tool needs to come to site – product is result of site-specific design enabled by tools). This paper is a position paper that questions if robot arms designed and developed for a different mode of production are the right tools for pursuing digital fabrication in constructing and building architecture. By introducing collaborative robotics the paper discusses and outlines the advantages as well as disadvantages of collaborative robotics systems. It concludes with recent findings in creative and collaborative robotics that could shift the use of industry robots in architecture as a research tool to collaborative robots as a pseudo-human colleague working on construction sites together with humans.