On November 19th, 2025, Research Associates Gili Ron and Xiliu Yang will lead a workshop dedicated to human-robot collaboration (HRC) in timber assembly hosted by the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) and the Department for Computing in Architecture (ICD/CA) at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane. The workshop will begin with students participating in an HRC setup for timber assembly, where a human and a cobot collaborate to build a tower out of small timber elements, aided by different sensing and augmented reality modalities and tools. They will then be guided through its reconsideration using ICD’s Feminist Technoscience (FTS) framework for HRC, a framework for supporting the design and evaluation of construction processes in which humans and robots share agency.
To consider and design close human-robot collaboration assisting tools, participants will be introduced to sensor-guided fabrication tools and to VIZOR interface and plugin for developing meaningful robotic reactions to human collaborators. Using the framework, students will design and digitally test reactive robot behaviours for HRC based on sensor feedback and augmented reality, and then test them within a collaborative timber assembly process in the real world. The workshop will culminate with a presentation and discussion, assessing the success of their HRC designs.