Senior researchers at the Technion faculties of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Architecture & Town Planning are engaged in a number of funded state-of-the-art research projects. We are seeking excellent Post-Doctoral and PhD candidates to join the research teams for the position detailed below.
AM2PM Project
ADDITIVE TO PREDICTIVE MANUFACTURING FOR MULTISTOREY CONSTRUCTION USING LEARNING BY PRINTING AND NETWORKED ROBOTICS
EU Horizon 2020
Prof. Rafael Sacks
1 fully funded PhD position, up to four years, starting September 2024
Derivation and evaluation of process and product configurations for construction of high-rise buildings. Each configuration will detail:
(a) a set of physical products (walls, beams, columns, slabs, building systems, etc.) and their construction methods,
(b) a set of equipment (using combinations of digital 3D printing heads on robotic arms; robotic arm manipulators for installing discrete prefabricated components; conventional concrete pumps; construction cranes to deliver materials and components);
(c) a set of construction workers; and
(d) a process definition determining the sequences of activities and the required human-robot interactions and collaborative activities to produce the products.
The starting point to define the configurations will be the requirement for the pace of construction (e.g., at least one floor per week). This will determine the needed quantity of materials, minimum rates of supply and delivery, number of printing heads, pumps and robotic arms, crew sizes, and production rates. T4.1 will also determine the climbing mechanisms for the equipment and the constraints on proximity of equipment and crews. Agent simulation models and pilot demonstrator development. An agent simulation model will be compiled to enable testing of the control algorithms. The simulation will enable optimising the numbers of each equipment type, number of crews, quantities of material and the rates of flow for variations of the typical building (i.e., to assess the relationships between the different system components and alternative floor plans, by using a building that can be defined parametrically). The simulation will be compiled using the AnyLogic® software, with additional routines programmed in Python.
System deployment optimisation and relocation in all dimensions. Determine how sets of 3D construction equipment can be assembled, operated, disassembled, packaged for transportation, transported to the next site, etc.
