In Singapore, develop robots for 3D-printing buildings

With the help of 3D-printing technology, you can create almost anything. But any, even the best printers, have a very significant drawback: they must be installed in a strictly defined place, from where the materials will still need to be delivered after printing. And it would be convenient if the printer printed anywhere. This is what the scientists from Singapore want to do, creating mobile robots for 3D printing.

For the development of responsible scientists from Nanyang Technological University. During the experiments, they first printed with a robot a concrete structure. According to the authors,

“An important advantage of such a system is the ability to create details of almost any size without participating at all, as the robots themselves determine the area of ​​printing.”

The design of robots uses mechanical manipulators on a movable platform. In this case, several robots can be used to create one detail, when each robot is working on its part of the overall project. In this case, the use of robots not only speeds up the printing, but also makes the resulting parts more durable, since you do not have to connect several parts. In this case, the resulting designs are quite “clear”, since the permissible error in the work does not exceed 1 millimeter.

In the future, engineers want to increase the working radius of robots by placing them on telescopic platforms and completing the design with an obstacle detection system and workers. In addition, the plans of the authors are truly ambitious: scientists state that their robots can be used not only on Earth, but also, for example, during the colonization of Mars.