The Department of Civil & Mineral Engineering (CivMin) has a newly installed robotic arm. A first for the department, it marks a major step towards automated, high-performance building for timber construction with this industrial-scale robotic fabrication system. It is housed in the Machine Shop within Galbraith Building, showcasing a markedly different era of technology.
The KUKA Quantec KR210 has a reach of 3.5 metres, making this robotic arm among the largest ever installed at a Canadian university. The platform is equipped with a high-power milling spindle, dual integrated robotic and fabrication controllers, and a precision workholding table. It allows for full-scale fabrication of timber components directly from digital models.
Professor Aryan Rezaei Rad (CivMin) and his team of full-time graduate students, as well as undergraduate summer research students, from the Sustainable Structural Systems research lab, are embracing this new addition and training to learn its full potential for their work.
“This is the culmination of a three-year period of planning, applying, coordinating, designing, managing, seeking approvals and, of course, waiting,” says Rad.
“It is very gratifying to see it finally in place and operational. I expect we will make fantastic use of this incredible new resource.”
The apparatus has the ability to sculpt large blocks of wood in 3D or carve out intricate interlocking shapes from sheets of material anchored to the table. Past Robot Made collaborations with students from the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design have demonstrated this ability to create wood structures requiring little in the way of fasteners. Last year’s dome structure, created as part of Robot Made 2025, was displayed in front of Galbraith Building for most of the fall.
The newly installed infrastructure enables new approaches to automation in fabrication, supporting innovation in the design and delivery of mass timber buildings. By integrating robotic manufacturing into the design process, the system advances the development of resource-efficient buildings with high-performance structural systems. This device now facilitates rapid progression from on-screen design concepts to fabricated, full-size specimens that can be manufactured with incredible precision.
The project was funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Research Fund. Robotic Solutions Inc. partnered on the project, supplying and integrating the system and contributing significant in-kind support.
By the numbers:
- 3.1 m: robot length
- 3.5 m: maximum reach (with tool attachment)
- 210 kg: rated payload
- 0.06 mm: pose repeatability
- 15 kW spindle for mass timber fabrication
