National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) Research Project Number for Undergraduate Students：MOST 110-2813-C-239-037-E

With the arrival of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, countless technological and digital fields are progressing rapidly, including the architectural industry. The international rise of BIM (Building Information Modeling) and digital architecture, through systematic material management and parametric form design, has become the most sought-after development direction in the fields of architecture and construction in recent years. The greatest characteristic of digital and parametric design lies in its reliance on precise calculations. The main structures of traditional buildings are mostly vertical and horizontal beam-column systems, whereas parametric design must perform specialized shaping of structural materials according to different designs. Currently, the pre-bending rebar machines used are all limited to single-axis bending, resulting in insufficient degrees of freedom regarding rebar bending orientation and final product shape, and cannot be perfectly applied to buildings with special shapes and structures. Therefore, how to make rebar products possess high degrees of transformational freedom and comply with fully automated production has become a common challenge across the interdisciplinary fields of construction, BIM, and architectural design. This research will combine a microcomputer-controlled conveyor platform with the high-mobility freedom of a robotic arm to design a new form of rebar bending process for future parametric architecture. Based on the operational logic of current pre-bending rebar machines, it uses the robotic arm to break through the limitations of original dimensions, creating an automated production system emphasizing uniqueness and non-modularization that can be applied to future digital architecture, public artworks, etc.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution has brought rapid progress to technological and digital fields. BIM architecture performs specialized shaping in response to different structures through systematic management and parametric design. To solve the current dilemma of single-axis bending faced by pre-bending rebar machines, this project seeks to perfect the design and fabrication of buildings with special shapes and structures. This research combines a microcomputer-controlled conveyor platform with the high-mobility freedom of a robotic arm to simulate and design a new form of rebar bending process for the future, using the robotic arm to break through original dimensional limitations and emphasizing an automated production system that is unique and non-modular.

Through this special research project, the robotic arm is combined with an automated wire conveyor platform to create more diverse simulations of rebar bending processes. Due to environmental limitations, this project currently uses iron wire to simulate the integrated operation of the automated material conveyor platform and the robotic arm. However, in future developments, the application of actual large-scale rebar and building materials can allow the automated material conveyor platform to reduce the labor costs consumed in current rebar handling processes and be practically applied to digital architectural design, producing the required unique forms of rebar with the highest precision, significantly reducing material waste and the occurrence of excessive error values.

As this technical research and implementation become more mature in the future, it can be applied to industries related to architectural structures, such as the design and production of public artworks or large-scale industrial designs. The operation process will be like handcrafted art, processing materials in a more intuitive way to complete design works.

The design of the automated material conveyor platform has currently been developed using the Arduino Uno board. This model of chipboard belongs to the entry-level category. It is expected that during future development and through more in-depth exploration and research, higher-end chipboards will be used to improve the machine design, allowing for a better experience in both operation and handling.