This research investigation is a project-based study in the design studio context, highlighting the use of robotic technology as a “perspective-machine” to create custom spatial readings/experiences through predetermined and controlled static/dynamic views. The early studies of this method—here referred to as robotically augmented imaging (RAI Alpha), enables architects, designers, and students to micro-direct the “spatial experience” and atmospheric effects of the project, through visual story-telling and in multi-scale set-ups ranging from architectural scale to product and object scale.
Demonstrating the contemporary opportunities of imaging and perspective—as an architectural tool to investigate/define the space, RAI Alpha studies the potentials of robotically controlled/manipulated views as a possible new medium for interacting with form, space, architecture, atmosphere, and performance in a scale-free seamless experience and as both a design tool and a product.

The primary goal of this research—referred to as RAI Alpha, is to examine the potential of robotic imaging and videography as a design tool to not only represent the design/built architectural artifacts but also to add another layer of design/experience inputs through the videography process. 

One of the unique aspects of RAI Alpha—in compression to other robotic videography projects, is that RAI Alpha is seeking a design application for an emerging tool. Looking at different projects at Studio EP employing this method, RAI Alpha is moving beyond the conventions of representation, where representation and the “architecture” are separate, and tries to blur the boundaries of representation, experience, scale, and even digital/physical resolution through augmented imaging. Different from most of the “productional” robotic projects in the field, RAI Alpha is an attempt to use robotics not as a tool to “finish” a project, but as a medium through which design the project.