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ANT (Amenities Navigation Technology) responds to today’s housing crisis with a logistics-based solution utilising autonomous, distributed robots to reconfigure private and shared interior spaces to negotiate the requirements of inhabitants. Inspired by space stations where all surfaces are utilised and warehouse robotics, the project embeds a continuous system of rails for robots to navigate, distribute, and store spatial elements and furniture across walls, ceilings, and floors in a continuously adaptive building life cycle. A series of robots were designed and evolved via sequential prototypes testing the constraints of the system. The architectural system employs a controlled set of continuous curvatures enabling robots to access all interior surfaces. Robotic agents were trained in a simulator using deep reinforcement learning to learn collaborative space planning policies while navigating the rail system. Cellular automata research was developed exploring neighbourhood relationships to influence the configuration of space in the design process. A spatial assembly algorithm generates continuous building assemblages. An agent-based pedestrian algorithm was developed to simulate the changing building states in relation to dynamic occupancy. Finally, augmented and virtual reality was leveraged in a custom platform allowing people living in the building to interact with and influence their spaces enabling shared space optimisation while considering each user’s unique lifestyle.
An outline of the crucial role and functions of ANT.
Conceptual animation of the system operation.
Illustration of the system management via VR.
Three-hundred and sixty degree interior view.
Exploring the interior.
The basic parts required to make the prototype.
Animation of the parts assembling itself to form the robot.
Navigation of robot from one track to another.
Training the robot digitally to identify the best navigation route in the building.
Sample set of elements carried by the robot to make the space meaningful.
Massing based on sunlight analysis.
These spatial components are used for the generation of the building.
Illustrating the key stages of generation.
A quick overview of the spatial assembly platform.
Selected output from the plethora outputs generated by the SA platform.
Example state of dynamic walls in one voxel, combinations of two and three voxels, and the aggregation of voxels based on cube input.
The voxels form a route network base on Walking Agents' behaviour and form private spaces in the adjacent areas.
Simulating users' occupancy of the floor space base on their preference and the route network adaptive changes.
The green colour created by the pedestrian agents indicates the route network, the red colour functioning as attraction points for pedestrian agents, and the blue colour classify the private spaces.