Robotic Fabrication in Conservation: Digital Workflows and Skills Evaluation

The paper describes a laboratory experiment carried out at Lawrence Technological University - College of Architecture and Design. The project assumes that the ubiquity of digital technologies in the framework of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has an important potential for the conservation of Cultural Heritage. The enhancement of digital resources, the possibility to access data simulation, and the availability of new construction tools such as robots allow for restoration methods to be augmented by digital data. In the current technological ecosystem, Cultural Heritage can benefit from digital information and digital fabrication, to achieve both digital and tangible conservation. The experiment simulates an on-site robotic fabrication process by imagining an integration of machines in the conservation building site. An industrial robot was used to operate within vertical and horizontal constraints on irregular surfaces to fabricate the missing volume of a wall gap. An abandoned church in Detroit downtown was used as a test case. A methodological workflow emerged from the research process and was evaluated as a proof of concept.