soft robotic placement

Clay Place

"Pick and Place" manufacturing processes work with the logic of adding prefabricated building blocks to form a larger overall structure.
Building on this idea, the aim of "Clay Place" is to go beyond this simple "pick and place" process, i.e. the pure picking up and targeted placement of prefabricated elements, and to enrich this manufacturing process with further factors such as varying placement pressures and directions.
The chosen material is soft clay that can be easily deformed. During placement the elements are compressed to different degrees producing a differentiated microstructure with varying adhesion, strength and porosity.
The compression and deformation of the elements is used to control the distribution of mass in the overall system. In places of high compression more mass is placed and in places of low compression less.