Designing Multi-Agent Matter
Cluster Professor Karola Dierichs Gives a Keynote at International Conference on Robotics and Automation
Figure 1 of Koleva, Denitsa; Özdemir, Eda; Tsiokou, Vaia; Dierichs, Karola (2022): Designing Matter: Autonomously Shape-Changing Granular Materials in Architecture. In ACADIA 2021, Realignments: Toward Critical Computation: Proceedings of the 41st Annual Conference of the Association of Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA). Copyright: Denitsa Koleva, Karola Dierichs, ICD, University of Stuttgart
On May 23rd, 2025, Cluster Professor for Material and Code Karola Dierichs will give an online keynote on »Designing Multi-Agent Matter« as part of the workshop Block by Block: Collaborative Strategies for Multi-agent Robotic Construction at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
The talk will focus on designed granular materials as multi-agent matter. Granular materials such as sand are modular systems: a large number of units—for example sand grains—are in loose contact with each other. This loose interaction allows for the formation of solid, liquid and gaseous states in granular materials [1]. The characteristics of a granular material are defined by the materiality and geometry of its component units—the particles. If these particles are designed, entirely new characteristics can be programmed into a granular material [2, 3].
Departing from this notion of a »designed granular material« the talk will show how granular materials can become multi-agent matter. Moving from self-interlocking particles for architecture-scale construction to autonomously entangling ones—we will pose the question how matter itself can become a robotic system.
[1] Jaeger, H. M., S. R. Nagel, and R. P. Behringer (1996). Granular solids, liquids, and gases. Rev. Mod. Phys. 68 (4), 1259–1273.
[2] Jaeger, H. M. (2015). Celebrating soft matter’s 10th anniversary: Toward jamming by design. Soft Matter 11, 12–27.
[3] Dierichs, K. and A. Menges (2021, oct). Designing architectural materials: from granular form to functional granular material. Bioinspiration Biomimetics 16 (6), 065010.