# Interactive Parametric Design and Robotic Fabrication within Mixed Reality Environment
## 5 Discussion and Future Work  
The proposed method and other existing methods are compared and discussed in terms of design and robotic-fabrication possibilities based on the observations obtained from the test results. With the proposed method, the user can explore design and production \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l c c c} \hline \hline  & \begin{tabular}{c} **Offline** \\ **Programming** \\ \end{tabular} & \
\begin{tabular}{c} **Parametric Robot** \\ **Control Tools** \\ \end{tabular} &
\begin{tabular}{c} **Proposed** \\ **Method** \\ \end{tabular} \\ \hline Users need to work with CAD/CAM tools & Yes & No & No \\ \hline Industrial robot offline programming knowledge is required & Yes & No & No \\ \hline Usage of the method is limited by parametric-modeling tools & No & Yes & Yes \\ \hline Production-immanent modeling tools are offered & No & Yes & Yes \\ \hline Mass-customization tools are offered & No & Yes & Yes \\ \hline Parametric design and robotic fabrication are discrete tasks in the workflow & Yes & Yes & No \\ \hline Users can explore and change design and production & No & Yes & Yes \\ parameters in the design phase & No & No & Yes \\ \hline Users can explore and change design and production & No & No & Yes \\ parameters in the production phase & No & Yes & Yes \\ \hline Users can get visual and spatial feedback on the design and production alternatives in the design phase & No & Yes & Yes \\ \hline Users can get visual and spatial feedback on the design and production alternatives in the production phase & No & No & Yes \\ \hline If users change the design or fabrication parameters, the following tasks in the workflow must be repeated, before & Yes & No & No \\ \hline If users change the design or fabrication parameters, the following tasks in the workflow must be repeated, while & Yes & Yes & No \\ \hline Users can interact with the design and fabrication parameters, while robotic fabrication continues & No & No & Yes \\ \hline Material efficiency by monitoring the changes on both stock & No & Yes & Yes \\ materials and design products, before production & No & Yes & Yes \\ \hline Material efficiency by monitoring the changes on both stock & No & No & Yes \\ materials and design products, while production continues & No & Yes & Yes \\ \hline Multiple users can collaborate in the design and robotic & No & Yes & Yes \\ \hline Multiple users can collaborate in the design and robotic & No & No & Yes \\ \hline Multiple users can collaborate in the design and robotic & No & Yes & Yes \\ fabrication by dynamically exploring design and production & No & No & Yes \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Comparison chart of robotic-fabrication offline programming, parametric robot-control tools, and the proposed method. alternatives within the mixed-reality environment by changing the parameters, and gets instant visual and spatial feedback on the design and production alternatives. With changing the parameters, the design product as well as the robot code required for the production of these parts are updated, and the robot code is uploaded to the industrial robot instantly. These tasks are completed in one unified step and the design-to-production process is shortened since the user does not need to do manual interventions in the intermediate steps. Robotic fabrication can continue uninterrupted with human-robot collaboration. Different from existing robotic fabrication workflows, with the proposed method, users can change the design and fabrication parameters while robotic fabrication continues. The design and manufacturing processes are combined and blended, thus users can complete the design and manufacturing tasks within one unified framework. Unlike other existing robotic fabrication methods, the proposed method provides interactive robotic-fabrication possibilities in addition to interactive parametric-design possibilities. In existing robotic-fabrication workflows, parametric design and robotic fabrication are discrete operations.