Construction Robotics - Meet the Editor-in-Chief
Prof. Sigrid Brell-Cokcan is the founder and director of the new Chair of Individualized Production (IP) at RWTH Aachen University and is currently the president of the Association for Robots in Architecture (RiA) and on the Board of Directors of euRobotics.
Before launching her own architecture firm II Architects int Istanbul/ Vienna in 2003 she was working with renowned international architects and engineers e.g. Coop Himmelblau, Frank O Gehry, Peter Cook and Bollinger & Grohmann on renowend projects such as Kunsthaus Graz, MARTA Herford, Musée des Confluences Lyon and BMW World Munich.
In the last years she has been pioneering the easy use of industrial robots for the creative industry while participating in international research and industry projects. The Association for Robots in Architecture is a KUKA and Autodesk developing partner and a validated EU research institution under the FP7 program.
In 2016 Sigrid Brell-Cokcan joined forces of RiA with euRobotics and co-founded the new Topic Group for Construction Robotics within Europe´s biggest public private partnership SPARC to contribute to the Multi Annual Roadmap(MAR) for robotic research within Horizon Europe. Since 2019 she has been serving on the Board of Directors. of euRobotics. As another result the new scientific Springer Journal on Construction Robotics was launched with her as chief editor in 2017.
At RWTH Aachen University Sigrid´s new professorship for Individualized Production focusses on the use of innovative machinery in material and building production. In order to create an environment that allows the efficient, individualized production of lot size one, new and user friendly methods for man machine interaction are developed.
The Chair of IP employs researchers from different fields of robotics and building production to streamline the necessary digital workflow from the initial design to the production process; shaping the construction site of the future via intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces. A recent development is the successful implementation of „haptic programming“ on a sensitive KUKA LBR iiwa robot, which was presented to the public at Hannover Fair by RWTH Aachen as one of the finalists for the KUKA Innovation Award 2016.
In 2018 Sigrid Brell-Cokcan co-founded the cross-faculty Center for Construction Robotics (CCR) on RWTH Aachen Campus to focus on the automation in construction with key industry leaders along the construction industry value chain. A new international master degree in Construction robotics for architecture, computer science, structural and mechanical engineering will start in 2020 to allow the new proliferation of the future digital construction engineers.