New Clothes for Robot Albert

Abstract

The projects ‘I, Robot’, ‘New Clothes for Robot Albert’ and ‘Robots House’ are three examples of design projects at the institute for industrial building production (ifib) that illustrate the same didactical approach for the training of students. The common principle is characterised by the confrontation of students of architecture with a kind of task, that almost is not related to architecture and that seems rather strange at the first glance. The background of the task allways has a strong technical regard and is defined by other departments. So already the understanding requires an exchange with some experts of these departments and the solution even a close cooperation with them. In most cases the partners are from the field of mechanical engineering or computer science. The common theme in these three projects is robotics, a forward-looking discipline especially interesting because of its wide complexity as well beyond a purely technical comprehension. In the Project ‘I, Robot’ multidisciplinary teams of students used the Not Quite C developer kit and the Lego Mindstorm Robotics system to develop robots for an indoor rally. This project is repeated annualy at ifib and at RWTH Aachen. In the Project ‘New Clothes for Robot Albert’ students of architecture designed and produced a spacial structure and cover for an existing and running humanoid service robot. This robot was developed by the Institute for Industrial Applications of Informatics and Microsystems (IAIM) of Prof. Dr. Dillmann for experimental purposes regarding learning strategies for service robots. In the Project ‘Robots House’ finaly students of the university cooperate with students of the university of applied science to find a concernment of architecture by today’s and future robots. The background is the demand for service robots in homes of handicapped or elder people triggered by the demographic changes; the approach is to consider today’s service robots as well as handicapped in a certain manner. The project is accompanied by the expert for handicapped accessible planning, Prof. Dr. Loeschcke and by scientists of the IAIM around Dr. Markus Ehrenmann.