Swiss architects Matthias Kohler and Fabio Gramazio have designed a robot, nicknamed Rob, which was utilized to lay bricks, in order to build a sculpture in New York City's Chinatown.
Rob-Robot
The robot functioned continuously for 14-hour days to build the sculpture. The robot arranged and glued more than 7,000 bricks each in a different position to complete the sculpture to form an infinite loop. The construction work was carried out by the robot amidst the public.
Storefront brought Rob to build the Pike Loop, an installation that measures around 22-metres in length. The architects for the project were also procured by Storefront from the research division for Architecture and Digital Fabrication at Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ).
A producer at the Storefront for Art and Architecture, Cesar Cotta, stated that the project gained much importance as an industrial robot was utilized for architectural work for the first time. Kohler and Gramazio conducted research into how industrial robots used for automobile assembling and other high-accuracy tasks can be utilized to build the robot. Kohler stated that the robot is capable of managing infinite number of minute details.