3D Scanning Studies
WUSTL Campus Facade Tests for Architectural Design of a Testing Platform for Autonomous Driving
The testing platform will be attuned to photogrammetry and 3D scanning technology and, therefore, will be made through technologies similar to those used in autonomous vehicles, thus, accounting for machine vision throughout the process of design. As such, this model will examine new kinds of buildings, cities, and public spaces that are calibrated to remote sensing and navigation technology rather than human optics. Additionally, the widespread use of autonomous vehicles in the future will allow for networked traffic patterns that streamline road use, as well as an increase in ride-sharing with less need for individual vehicle ownership. Consequently, this study will examine the potential of cities which need fewer roads, parking lots, and parking structures. Researchers will speculate on how urban form might change in relation to streamlined vehicular infrastructure and increased public and pedestrian realm.
What fabrication techniques could best achieve equivalency with real-world conditions and what discoveries might emerge from this scale material research? In order to address the sensing technologies of autonomous vehicles, the team will tune material qualities—color, texture, sheen, opacity, translucency, albedo, and luminosity—and layer these onto architectural form and urban space. In addition, atmospheric interference like fog, smog, rain, and glare will need to be modeled in the environment. As such, it will be necessary to incorporate multiple digital tools and various equipment in order to achieve these effects. Vale and research assistants in the School of Architecture will composite digital fabrication processes—3D printing, laser cutting, CNC routing, CNC hot-wire foam cutter, CNC airbrush painting, vacuum forming, fiberglass casting—along with analog building practices to create a flexible structural system that can transform for various tests. While the fabrication processes will be layered in order to be attuned to the scale model, they will present new types of interior cladding or structural systems that could translate into full-scale buildings.