Soft Robotics and Emergent Materials in Architecture

Abstract

This paper investigates the potential of soft robotics that are enabled by emergent materials in architecture. Distributed, adaptive soft robotics holds the promise to address many issues in architectural environments such as energy efficiency as well as user comfort and safety.Two examples out of a series of experiments conducted in the Material Dynamics Lab at the New Jersey Institute of Technology are being introduced and serve as a vehicle to explore distributed soft robotics in architectural environments. The design process and project development methods of the soft robotic systems integrated the fabrication of working proof of concept prototypes as well as their testing.