Intelligent Construction & Building Systems

There is a real need, urgency, but also opportunity to rethink design and construction in a comprehensive manner, as we can simply not afford to continue building in the way we do now. Conventional construction methods are resource-intensive, inflexible, and poorly suited to the increasing complexity and variability of contemporary building environments. Advancing building construction is therefore a complex task that requires profound new methods, as architecture and construction differ substantially from other research fields and industries due to the site-, culture-, and context-specific and one-off character of buildings. Our lab addresses this challenge by rethinking how buildings are designed, fabricated, and assembled.

Within this larger context research spans two closely related areas. The first focuses on collective robotic construction, where teams of embodied robotic systems coordinate to fabricate and assemble architectural structures in dynamic, unstructured environments. Rather than automating isolated tasks, we investigate construction processes in which multiple robots operate collaboratively, adapt to shared spatial constraints, and respond to high-level design intent. The second research area explores human–robot collaboration in construction, examining how robotic systems can work alongside human builders through shared control, intuitive interfaces, and adaptive behaviors. By integrating collective robotics with human-in-the-loop construction workflows, we aim to develop intelligent construction systems that are scalable, robust, and applicable to real-world building sites.