Case Study: Penn achieves seamless remote robotics collaboration with Dropbox

How Penn architecture students are using robots to remotely design and build a pavilion

Penn’s architecture students and professor Ezio Blasetti needed a way to keep a robotics-and-carbon-fiber design seminar moving when COVID-19 shut down campus and the robotics lab. Using Dropbox, along with Zoom and Dropbox Paper, they had to collaborate remotely on code, renderings, images, and feedback while continuing work on a pavilion for the Venice Biennale.

Dropbox provided a shared Dropbox Space that centralized project files and made updates visible in real time, and Blasetti also used Dropbox to share video from a robot set up in his home studio for remote fabrication testing. As a result, Penn was able to keep the class organized, maintain teamwork and iteration from home, and continue progressing on the project despite campus closures.

Penn

Ezio Blasetti

Professor in The Graduate Architecture Program