ROB|ARCH 2026: Special session announced - Workshops and registration open!

ROB|ARCH 2026 (August 24-28 in Aarhus, Denmark) is fast approaching.

The organizers invite you to contribute through the Call for this year's Special Session and to explore its intensive 3-day workshop program. The Early Bird registration is now open!

"As part of the ROB|ARCH 2026 conference, we invite the community to contribute to the Special Session, a dedicated platform for work‑in‑progress research, artistic or experimental work, student projects, and design explorations that would benefit from peer discussion but are not intended for inclusion in the conference proceedings."

"Continuing the ROB|ARCH tradition, the Special Session celebrates emerging ideas, speculative directions, and innovative prototypes that advance discourse within robotic fabrication for architecture, design and fabrication, in relation to the conference theme Detangling Dependencies."

Complete details...

KUKA|prc in Unity Visual Scripting – Association for Robots in Architecture

Robots in Architecture has been kind enough to share its new project that links KUKA|prc with Unity and Rhino.Compute:

"While Grasshopper is extremely strong at defining geometrically complex operations, it is less optimized for processes that incorporate live sensor feedback or branching data paths, due to its fundamentally acyclic, directed graph.

In our research at Creative Robotics we have integrated KUKA|prc into the game engine Unity and its included Unity Visual Scripting system, that features an accessible integration of state machines.

As Unity cannot cover the same scope of geometrical operations as Rhino, we still utilize Rhino and Grasshopper via Rhino.Compute for pathplanning, while depending on UVS’ state machine for controlling the process flow."

Complete details...

Discrete Element Modeling to Robotic Fabrication using the COMPAS framework online workshop, November 7-9 (McNeel Europe)

 

Discrete Element Modeling to Robotic Fabrication using the COMPAS framework online workshop 

Tutors: Tom Van Mele, Gonzalo Casas  (ETH Zurich)

November 7-9, 2022

10 AM–5 PM CET

Hosted by McNeel Europe (Zoom)

Digital Fabrication in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction industry, requires the combination of various toolchains and software platforms, across the boundaries of multiple scientific, socio-economic and technological domains, into efficient pipelines for integrated computational development and project delivery. Over the past 6 years, the NCCR Digital Fabrication at ETH Zurich has greatly invested in the development of COMPAS, a comprehensive open-source computational framework written in Python, that aims at streamlining these multi-disciplinary workflows and the integration of state-of-the-art tooling to simplify their adoption by architects, designers and researchers from within parametric design environments.

In this 3-day workshop, Tom Van Mele of Block Research Group and Gonzalo Casas of Gramazio Kohler Research will introduce participants to COMPAS by providing an overview of the functionality of the core framework, the extension packages, the UI system, and its relation to CAD software. Together with the participants they will then step-by-step explore an example application focused on the modeling, equilibrium analysis, and robotic fabrication of a discrete assembly.

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Use the geometry kernel and core data structures of COMPAS.
• Exchange data between different processes, plugins and tools.
• Design a simple discrete element model, identify the interfaces between the blocks, and manage block interactions with a specialized data structure.
• Calculate the required conditions for equilibrium.
• Analyze and explain the kinematic structure of a robot model based on its URDF model.
• Apply fundamental building blocks of robotics (forward and inverse kinematics, cartesian and kinematic planning, planning scene).
• Design and plan stereotypical assembly processes (e.g. bricklaying) in simulation, and execute them in a simulated robot environment.

Day 1: Focus on core framework

• Overview of COMPAS framework
• Geometry & Data structures: deep dive into the geometry kernel.
• Packages & Extensions: an overview of the ecosystem.
• Integration with CAD: geometry representations and artists.
• Remote Procedure Calls: leveraging the entire Python ecosystem from within the CAD.
• Plugins & Tools, creating and distributing Grasshopper components in pure python.

Day 2: Focus on COMPAS Masonry and FAB

• Discrete element Models: Blocks, Interfaces, Equilibrium
• Parametric generation of discrete wall geometries using the assembly data structures.
• Definition of boundary conditions and interfaces recognition;
• Equilibrium evaluation of the assembly sequence using the solvers available in COMPAS Masonry;
• Global equilibrium of the structure subject to self-weight and after the application of different loading conditions.
• Robotic fabrication:
• Fundamental concepts of robotics: control modes, positioning and singularities, robot coordinate frames and transformations
• Description of robot models and the URDF format.
• Forward Kinematics and Inverse Kinematics (analytic and numerical solvers).
• Robotic backends: ROS (Robot Operating System) and the MoveIt! Motion planning framework, Pybullet, pure-python solvers.
• Path planning: Cartesian and kinematic path planning. Goal constraints definition.
• Planning scene manipulation. Dynamic end-effector attachment and detachment.
• Prototypical structure of pick and place applications.
• Sequencing and planning of a discrete element model for robotic fabrication.
• Robot control (ABB and UR).

Day 3: Integrative project

• Procedural generation of curved wall geometry.
• Conversion to assembly data structure.
• Methods for interface detection.
• Stability assessment of intermediate assembly stages.
• Stability assessment of complete structure.
• Path planning for robotic assembly.
• Fabrication simulation.

Course requirements: Participants are expected to be familiar with Rhino/Grasshopper and have at least a basic knowledge of python programming.

Online course fees: EUR 395,- (+VAT); full-time students and university teachers get a 50% discount (proof of status required). Please note that we will confirm your seat after your payment has cleared.

Max. number of participants: 25. If there is no quorum, the course will be canceled two weeks before.

Course language: English

Educational seats are limited. Sign up now by contacting McNeel Europe!