RoboBlox is a 4X4 3D Blox artwork which comprises of a sculptural frieze, interactive artwork and a ‘making of RoboBlox’ video (see below).  While the artwork is inspired by Thieri Foulc’s 2D-Morpholo Tile Game and the Oulipo French Movement, the muse of RoboBlox’s sculptural frieze is the windy Brisbane/Maiwar river. The artwork uses rules and constraints to trigger the creation of the blocks which also serves as the basis of interactive creative engagement between the public and artwork. To create the individual block designs, QUT Design Robotics and UQ researchers coded a novel computational workflow into an industrial robotic arm to hotwire-cut polystyrene into the desired designs. 

The making of RoboBlox Video
As robots will be commonly used in design education and fabrication, this artwork is an exploration into finding novel ways to communicate robotic design processes. This is important as designers and architectural manufacturers are likely to rely on robotic systems for the production of design and architectural work in the coming future. In keeping with this approach, a video which explains the design and manufacturing process of RoboBlox was placed within the exhibition. It elaborates on the workflow where open-source plug-ins were used particularly to develop a web-based interactive design platform and code that translates 2D graphics into 3D forms. It further documents the eventual robotic fabrication of the frieze pieces.

Roboblox, Museum of Brisbane. Photo credit: Shuwei Zhang

RoboBlox was exhibited in Brisbane, Australia at: 

 
More on RoboBlox and related work: