Teams of mobile 3-D printing robots could fix bridges on Earth and build them to Mars

Commercial 3-D printing--or additive manufacturing (AM)--is a booming industry. But if printers were liberated from the typical setup involving an immobile box and a gantry, and set free to work in roving, collaborative teams, the AM business might be much bigger with many more applications, including as robotic masons at construction sites and repairing crumbling urban and rural civil infrastructure. A multidisciplinary robotics team at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering, hosted by NYU's Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) and supported by a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), is working to make the concept a reality by designing autonomous systems for 3-D printers on robotic arms attached to mobile, roving platforms. Functioning in teams--a concept called collective additive manufacturing (CAM)--these printers, with machine learning and other artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, could repair bridges, tunnels and other civic structures; work in ocean depths and disaster zones; or even head to space to work on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Feng explained that the goal is for accuracy, efficiency, and adaptability to the environment and to real-time conditions--rather the way a navigation app reroutes a vehicle that it senses has veered from a mapped course.