Industrial robots and "raw" tree trunks: the future of wood construction !

The HERA Award Sustainable Engineering 2022 is awarded to Justin Goose.

Justin Goosse's work is based on the observation that wood is not competitive enough with respect to concrete and steel in the construction sector, simply because it requires several (costly) transformations before being used.

The student has developed a connector allowing the connection of raw trunks in a constructive system: the "reciprocal structures", a kind of giant Mikado characterized by the ability to cross spans much longer than the intrinsic length of the beams that compose them.

The geometry of the connections is parameterized and automatically generated according to the trunks used.

The machining of the connector (by removing material from the trunks) was tested by traditional means (using a router), then by robotic ones. The second method was preferred, proving to be much more efficient.

The result is a wood-wood assembly, without the use of synthetic glues or metal fasteners, with less waste and fit to the use of trunks that are currently not very valuable, due to their species or their curvature.

Published on April 26, 2022