The Third Arm Creator
B.A.T
B.A.T is probably the most experimental company introduced in the ‘Rookies of Neo Manufacturing’ talk show series, which was founded by four architects without any formal training in robotics five years ago. How does their journey from creating new design solutions to utilize 6 axis robot arms expand to developing their own software and education programs? The cofounders of B.A.T, Donghan Shin and Minjae Ko sat down with our moderators Jie-Eun Hwang and Daehyuck Choi to discuss the motivation of their work and the ways in which they see a paradigm shift of manufacturing fueled by new technologies during the third talk of the ‘Rookies of Neo Manufacturing’ series on August 14th at the Sewoon Basement.
Scene from the talk - Daehyuck Choi, Donghan Shin, Minjae Ko, and Jie-eun Hwang (image: Taxu Lee)B.A.T provides design-production solutions that can be applied to both the creative fields and more traditional manufacturing fields. The 6 axis robotic arm is the ‘robot’ that they are developing a middleware named GERTY for, to use the industrial 6-axis robot arm as a creative digital production platform. The industrial 6-axis robot arm has a quite long history within the field of mass production industries. It is mostly operated by trained engineers that ‘teach’ the robot specific movements to be repeated over and over. However, the research and experimentations in architecture school, prior to founding B.A.T unlocked endless possibilities to actualize digital CAD models into 3 dimensional objects and even spaces. For the members of B.A.T, the most valuable aspect of the industrial 6-axis robot arm was not the programmability to repeat certain actions, but the possibility to reinvent the way we fabricate custom-designed things in small batches in a fast, efficient and precise manner.
Perhaps the largest motivation for B.A.T to jump into the field of developing middleware software to transform digital 3D CAD drawings into an object that is milled, printed, molded or even welded into an real life object has been the high entry hurdle that users experience when first being introduced to industrial 6-axis robot arms. The counter intuitive interface of the existing software and the limited training capability provided by the robot manufacturers, not to mention the high cost of an industrial 6-axis robot arm itself makes it extremely difficult for first time users to understand the full potential of the technology. B.A.T’s work aims to fill this gap, and expand the market base by providing the software that makes it easier to control the robot arm, conduct a wide variety of projects dealing with materials such as ceramic, bricks, concrete and even steel to generate more creative use cases.
Welding with the robot arm (image: B.A.T presentation material)The development of methods to fabricate things is inextricably connected unlocking new possibilities for different things that can be fabricated. While B.A.T’s work has a clear appeal to designers, architects and anyone who is passionate about creative fabrication, it also inspires traditional technicians who already utilize the industrial 6 axis robot arm in their routined work.
Minjae Ko shared about the trials and errors the team had to undergo to develop methods to stack and weld metal, such as it almost seems as if they are 3d printing with metal with the robotic arm. Working closely with engineers who are well trained in the welding process a mutual learning occurred. The B.A.T members relied heavily on the embodied techniques of the trained technicians, and the technicians were showing great interest in applying the new technology in their daily operations. Accumulating such use cases and developing new solutions compels B.A.T to take on more challenging new experimental projects where they need to test how to use new materials and fabrication techniques with new technologies. For now, B.A.T is more interested in creating a larger library of solutions while also propelling the commercialization of the platform they have built thus far.
The Friedrich Naumann Foundation co-hosted with the Beta City Center of the University of Seoul the ‘Smart Rookies of Neo Manufacturing’ talk show series as part of the Sewoon Global Forum 2020. The talk was streamed live on Youtube and the recording is available at https://youtu.be/nxQDbbHTMA4
The next talk is featuring Rarerow, a furniture brand which targets individual customers while pioneering the steel furniture market. More information can be found on the Sewoon Global Forum 2020 website: https://forum.betacity.center.
