Robotics Seminar - Rethinking digital construction: a collaborative future of humans, machines, and craft

The construction industry is experiencing a transformative shift with the integration of digital fabrication technologies. This talk explores the potential for meaningful collaboration between humans and machines in construction workflows, emphasizing the synergy between craft and computational processes. The talk aims to show how emerging technologies can enhance human skills and redefine traditional building techniques by examining research directions such as augmented manual fabrication and augmented human-robot collaboration. These research directions, demonstrated through built case studies, show how digital tools such as extended reality (XR) and collaborative robotics can assist craftspeople, enhancing both precision and creativity while preserving the tactile and sociocultural aspects of construction. The results highlight the potential for new, hybrid construction methods that integrate human agency with machine precision, offering a vision for a more collaborative and sustainable future in construction.

Bio: Daniela Mitterberger is an architect and researcher with a strong interest in new media and the relationship between humans, digital fabrication and emerging technologies. Mitterberger is an Assistant Professor at Princeton University where she develops innovative computational methods that enable human-machine collaborative processes through adaptive digital fabrication and extended reality. She is Co-founder and Director of «MAEID [Büro für Architektur und Transmediale Kunst] », a multidisciplinary architecture practice based in Austria. Mitterberger received her doctoral degree at ETH Zurich (Dr. sc.) in 2023 on "Adaptive digital fabrication and human-machine collaboration for architecture". In 2023 she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich and within the Design++ initiative (Centre for Augmented Computational Design in AEC). There she was the Co-lead of the Immersive Design Lab, a lab for collaborative research and teaching in the field of extended reality and machine learning in architecture and construction.
Previously, she was a lecturer at several international graduate and postgraduate programs, amongst others at the MSD Melbourne (Australia), UniSA University of Adelaide (Australia), University of Applied Arts Vienna (Austria), Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (Austria), University of Innsbruck (Austria), ETH Zurich (Switzerland), Tongji University (China), and IACC in Barcelona (Spain). Her work has been recognized with several international awards and has been widely exhibited at various galleries, institutions, and events, including Venice Biennale 2021, Princess of Asturia Awards 2021, Seoul Biennale 2020, Ars Electronica Linz, MAK Vienna, Melbourne Triennial, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and HdA Graz.