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Dec 31, 2022

MIT engineers build load-bearing structures using tree forks instead of steel joints

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

Discarded tree forks could replace load-bearing joints in architecture projects using a construction technique developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The system combines generative design and robotic fabrication to allow tree forks – the pieces of wood where a trunk or branch splits into two – to be used as the Y-shaped nodes that connect straight building elements.

Created by the Digital Structures research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the five-step approach has already been used to install a demonstration structure on the university’s campus, with a larger pavilion now in the works.

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