IEEE Future Directions
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3D printing is able to manufacture (additive manufacturing) from tiny parts to big turbine fan and even be able to print a whole house.
Whatever is printed, however, has be be “smaller” than the printer. This has been an accepted fact so far. Now, however, a research team at Nanyang Technical University in Singapore is proposing to use a team of mobile robots that can cooperate to manufacture objects larger than themselves (watch the clip).
Having moving robots printing 3D structures is challenging because it requires an extreme precision in localisation, better than 1mm accuracy, and that is not easy in an open environment. Additionally, working out a cooperation scheme is also challenging since you do not want to program the robots operation but rather assign them with the goal and let them work out the best strategy. The idea is to have autonomous systems that cooperate each one understanding what is the overall goal and how each one can contribute.
The team at Nanyang so far has operated robots in the lab and it is using multiple cameras for precision localisation. Their idea is to develop swarms of robots that can speed up the construction of large objects and they see as a potential area of application the building is hard to reach places where human based construction will be difficult, like in underground caves. They also mention, in the future, the possibility of using robotic swarms for building on Mars…
