Autonomous Mobile Additive Manufacturing (AM) Robot

Recent technological innovations in the areas of additive manufacturing and collaborative robotics have paved the way toward realizing the concept of on-demand, personalized production on the shop floor. Additive manufacturing process can provide the capability of printing highly customized parts based on various customer requirements. Autonomous, mobile systems provide the flexibility to move custom parts around the shop floor to various manufacturing operations, as needed by product requirements. Rapid advances in manufacturing technology have the potential to significantly increase the productivity, quality, and efficiency of manufacturing systems. Factories of the future need to have greater personalization capabilities, with each item made to order, at the low cost and high-quality consumers have come to expect.

 

Researchers at Arizona State University have developed a technology that combines additive manufacturing (AM) processes with an autonomous mobile robot (AMR) base to create a "manufacture and deliver" system that produces parts while moving. It features a hierarchical control structure coordinating navigation and extrusion tasks alongside independent controllers for the printing process and mobile platform. The framework adapts dynamically to environmental changes and synchronizes printing with movement, demonstrated through experimental and simulation case studies evaluating print quality and manufacturing throughput.

 

This technology provides a framework which combines mobile additive manufacturing with autonomous mobile robot to enhance flexible, on-demand production and delivery in smart manufacturing systems.

 

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