Augmented bricklaying

Abstract

Augmented bricklaying explores the manual construction of intricate brickwork through visual augmentation, and applies and validates the concept in a real-scale building project—a fair-faced brickwork facade for a winery in Greece. As shown in previous research, robotic systems have proven to be very suitable to achieve various differentiated brickwork designs with high efficiency but show certain limitations, for example, in regard to spatial freedom or the usage of mortar on site. Hence, this research aims to show that through the use of a craft-specific augmented reality system, the same geometric complexity and precision seen in robotic fabrication can be achieved with an augmented manual process. Towards this aim, a custom-built augmented reality system for in situ construction was established. This process allows bricklayers to not depend on physical templates, and it enables enhanced spatial freedom, preserving and capitalizing on the bricklayer’s craft of mortar handling. In extension to conventional holographic representations seen in current augmented reality fabrication processes that have limited context-awareness and insufficient geometric feedback capabilities, this system is based on an object-based visual–inertial tracking method to achieve dynamic optical guidance for bricklayers with real-time tracking and highly precise 3D registration features in on-site conditions. By integrating findings from the field of human–computer interfaces and human–machine communication, this research establishes, explores, and validates a human–computer interactive fabrication system, in which explicit machine operations and implicit craftsmanship knowledge are combined. In addition to the overall concept, the method of implementation, and the description of the project application, this paper also quantifies process parameters of the applied augmented reality assembly method concerning building accuracy and assembly speed. In the outlook, this paper aims to outline future directions and potential application areas of object-aware augmented reality systems and their implications for architecture and digital fabrication.

Measuring the impacts of AR HMD on users’ situation awareness during wood frame assembly tasks

“…In essence, AR applications utilized this capability to improve productivity and performance in assembly tasks. On the basis of these precursor research, AR has been applied in more practical situations, such as conduit construction (Chalhoub and Ayer, 2018), implementing free-form modular surface (Fazel and Izadi, 2018), manual bricklaying (Mitterberger et al, 2020), and wood frame assembly (Qin et al, 2021). These studies examined the usability of AR for various practical tasks and compared the performance with traditional 2D printed manuals, of which the findings supported the improvement of task efficiency and accuracy by AR displays.…”

On-site Holographic Building Construction: A Case Study of Aurora

“…Meža et al (2015) applied holographic instruction to track and monitor the process of construction projects; Fazela and Izadi ( 2018) introduced an interactive tool for constructing complex modular surfaces in Mix Reality environment; Goepel (2019) tested MR with HoloLens in the assembly of non-standard prefabricated elements based on an optimized parametric structure. Mitterberger et al (2020) referred to the major deficiency derived from the previous MR-aided manual constructions is the insufficient alignment of the digital model with the physical environment. In response, they presented a customized MR system based on an object-based visualinertial tracking method in the construction of a brick envelope.…”

Bridging the collectives: A review of collective human–robot construction

“…With the cyborg as a metaphor, human abilities have also been enhanced and extended by computational and robotic tools. People can now sense and visualize information that was previously out of human's inherent capability with the aid of external instruments, such as smart devices (e.g., smart phone 44 and smartwatch 45 ), skin-based interface, 46,47 and wearable (e.g., head-mounted displays, 48,49 backpack and portable hand-held devices 50 ). In addition, hybrid or mixed reality starts to merge physical and digital environments into one, allowing humans to have more meaningful interactions and controls over computational and robotic tools.…”