Energy Efficient Multi-Robotic 3D Printing for Large-Scale Construction – Framework, Challenges, and a Systematic Approach

Author(s):  
Azadeh Haghighi ◽  
Abdullah Mohammed ◽  
Lihui Wang

Abstract An emerging trend in smart manufacturing of the future is robotic additive manufacturing or 3D printing which introduces numerous advantages towards fast and efficient printing of high-quality customized products. In the case of the construction industry, and specifically in large-scale settings, multi-robotic additive manufacturing (i.e., adopting a team of 3D printer robots) has been found to be a promising solution in order to overcome the existing size limitations. Consequently, several research efforts regarding the development and control of such robotic additive manufacturing solutions have been reported in the literature. However, given the increasing environmental concerns, establishing novel methodologies for energy-efficient processing and planning of these systems towards higher sustainability is necessary. This paper presents a novel framework towards energy-efficient multi-robotic additive manufacturing and describes the overall challenges with respect to the energy efficiency. The energy module of the proposed framework is implemented in a simulation environment. In addition, a systematic approach for energy-aware robot positioning is introduced based on the novel concept of reciprocal energy map. The reciprocal energy map is established based on the original energy map calculated by the energy module and can be used for identifying the low energy zones for positioning and relocation of robots during the printing process.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Agrim Gupta ◽  
Silvio Savarese ◽  
Surya Ganguli ◽  
Li Fei-Fei

AbstractThe intertwined processes of learning and evolution in complex environmental niches have resulted in a remarkable diversity of morphological forms. Moreover, many aspects of animal intelligence are deeply embodied in these evolved morphologies. However, the principles governing relations between environmental complexity, evolved morphology, and the learnability of intelligent control, remain elusive, because performing large-scale in silico experiments on evolution and learning is challenging. Here, we introduce Deep Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning (DERL): a computational framework which can evolve diverse agent morphologies to learn challenging locomotion and manipulation tasks in complex environments. Leveraging DERL we demonstrate several relations between environmental complexity, morphological intelligence and the learnability of control. First, environmental complexity fosters the evolution of morphological intelligence as quantified by the ability of a morphology to facilitate the learning of novel tasks. Second, we demonstrate a morphological Baldwin effect i.e., in our simulations evolution rapidly selects morphologies that learn faster, thereby enabling behaviors learned late in the lifetime of early ancestors to be expressed early in the descendants lifetime. Third, we suggest a mechanistic basis for the above relationships through the evolution of morphologies that are more physically stable and energy efficient, and can therefore facilitate learning and control.


Biomimetics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Ansheed A. Raheem ◽  
Pearlin Hameed ◽  
Ruban Whenish ◽  
Renold S. Elsen ◽  
Aswin G ◽  
...  

Biomimetics is an emerging field of science that adapts the working principles from nature to fine-tune the engineering design aspects to mimic biological structure and functions. The application mainly focuses on the development of medical implants for hard and soft tissue replacements. Additive manufacturing or 3D printing is an established processing norm with a superior resolution and control over process parameters than conventional methods and has allowed the incessant amalgamation of biomimetics into material manufacturing, thereby improving the adaptation of biomaterials and implants into the human body. The conventional manufacturing practices had design restrictions that prevented mimicking the natural architecture of human tissues into material manufacturing. However, with additive manufacturing, the material construction happens layer-by-layer over multiple axes simultaneously, thus enabling finer control over material placement, thereby overcoming the design challenge that prevented developing complex human architectures. This review substantiates the dexterity of additive manufacturing in utilizing biomimetics to 3D print ceramic, polymer, and metal implants with excellent resemblance to natural tissue. It also cites some clinical references of experimental and commercial approaches employing biomimetic 3D printing of implants.


History of additive manufacturing started in the 1980s in Japan. Stereolithography was invented first in 1983. After that tens of other techniques were invented under the common name 3D printing. When stereolithography was invented rapid prototyping did not exists. Tree years later new technique was invented: selective laser sintering (SLS). First commercial SLS was in 1990. At the end of 20t century, first bio-printer was developed. Using bio materials, first kidney was 3D printed. Ten years later, first 3D Printer in the kit was launched to the market. Today we have large scale printers that printed large 3D objects such are cars. 3D printing will be used for printing everything everywhere. List of pros and cons questions rising every day.


Polymers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 2115
Author(s):  
Meghan E. Lamm ◽  
Lu Wang ◽  
Vidya Kishore ◽  
Halil Tekinalp ◽  
Vlastimil Kunc ◽  
...  

Wood and lignocellulosic-based material components are explored in this review as functional additives and reinforcements in composites for extrusion-based additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing. The motivation for using these sustainable alternatives in 3D printing includes enhancing material properties of the resulting printed parts, while providing a green alternative to carbon or glass filled polymer matrices, all at reduced material costs. Previous review articles on this topic have focused only on introducing the use of natural fillers with material extrusion AM and discussion of their subsequent material properties. This review not only discusses the present state of materials extrusion AM using natural filler-based composites but will also fill in the knowledge gap regarding state-of-the-art applications of these materials. Emphasis will also be placed on addressing the challenges associated with 3D printing using these materials, including use with large-scale manufacturing, while providing insight to overcome these issues in the future.


This is a review paper on 3D printing, its significance, and future scope in the aircraft industry.In this article, additive manufacturing is compared with traditional manufacturing in the context of the aircraft industry that gives more accurate knowledge about how additive manufacturing is more effective in terms of cost-cutting, waste prevention, customization, and large-scale production. We will go into the need for 3D printing technology, how it has taken in step over other manufacturing process and are being used for a host of different applications. The paper gives sufficient information about various types of material used in additive manufacturing with the applications, examples, requirements, and process moreover some overview of limitations as well. How Rapid tooling is used with a different process to reduce time and get more productive and efficient parts for the aircraft industries. The use of 3D printing technology in the aircraft industry plays a major role and gained immense applications. It has greatly affected the production line due to its flexibility and ease of production. It is capable of producing intricate parts, a more resilient and lightweight structure that achievesa weight reduction of 40-60%, subsequently result in a leaner cost structure, material saving, and lower fuel consumption.The last section deals with the future scope of additive manufacturing in the aircraft industry with various parameters design aircraft wings, complex design parts, additive manufacturing in space. More companies and the aerospace industry continue to see the value of 3D printing and begin developing on-site 3D printing operations and investing in the technology


2013 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 194-201
Author(s):  
Michael Hansmeyer ◽  
Benjamin Dillenburger

Computational design allows for architecture with an extraordinary degree of topographical and topological complexity. Limitations of traditional CNC technologies have until recently precluded this architecture from being fabricated. While additive manufacturing has made it possible to materialize these complex forms, this has occurred only at a very small scale. In trying to apply additive manufacturing to the construction of full-scale architecture, one encounters a dilemma: existing large-scale 3D printing methods can only print highly simplified shapes with rough details, while existing high-resolution technologies have limited print spaces, high costs, or material attributes that preclude a structural use. This paper provides a brief background on additive manufacturing technology and presents recent developments in sand-printing technology that overcome current 3D printing restrictions. It then presents a specific experiment, Digital Grotesque project, which is the first application of 3D sand-printing technology at an architecture scale. It describes how this project attempts to exploit the potentials of these new technologies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 1033 ◽  
pp. 98-102
Author(s):  
Taha Waqar ◽  
Muhammad Azhar Ali Khan ◽  
Muhammad Asad ◽  
Faramarz Djavanroodi ◽  
Jamal Nayfeh

Additive manufacturing is a technology that is influencing every facet of manufacturing such as casting. 3D printing in particular has the potential to revolutionize castings in terms of precision and time taken in production. Patternless molds increase the efficiency of the casting process for large scale manufactured components. Therefore, ceramic based molds can be utilized for low temperature alloy parts such as mounting brackets. Nowadays, 3D printing technologies allow the direct printing of these molds. This is possible with the aid of CAD modelling of the casting mold which allows instant printing of patternless molds. The aim of this work is to introduce an approach to prepare a 3D design for a casting mold that can be manufactured using 3D printing technology. Mold design was made using Solidworks software according to standardized calculations from which cope and drag components were extracted. Candidates for potential mold material are highlighted along with advantages & limitations of utilizing 3D printing methodology.


Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (7) ◽  
pp. 1965 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Bergner ◽  
Emmanuel Dean-Leon ◽  
Gordon Cheng

The sense of touch enables us to safely interact and control our contacts with our surroundings. Many technical systems and applications could profit from a similar type of sense. Yet, despite the emergence of e-skin systems covering more extensive areas, large-area realizations of e-skin effectively boosting applications are still rare. Recent advancements have improved the deployability and robustness of e-skin systems laying the basis for their scalability. However, the upscaling of e-skin systems introduces yet another challenge—the challenge of handling a large amount of heterogeneous tactile information with complex spatial relations between sensing points. We targeted this challenge and proposed an event-driven approach for large-area skin systems. While our previous works focused on the implementation and the experimental validation of the approach, this work now provides the consolidated foundations for realizing, designing, and understanding large-area event-driven e-skin systems for effective applications. This work homogenizes the different perspectives on event-driven systems and assesses the applicability of existing event-driven implementations in large-area skin systems. Additionally, we provide novel guidelines for tuning the novelty-threshold of event generators. Overall, this work develops a systematic approach towards realizing a flexible event-driven information handling system on standard computer systems for large-scale e-skin with detailed descriptions on the effective design of event generators and decoders. All designs and guidelines are validated by outlining their impacts on our implementations, and by consolidating various experimental results. The resulting system design for e-skin systems is scalable, efficient, flexible, and capable of handling large amounts of information without customized hardware. The system provides the feasibility of complex large-area tactile applications, for instance in robotics.


2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Narcisa T. Morallo

Bluetooth is now mainstream that it has become synonymous with the 21st century. The wireless technology allows exchanging data over short distance using short wavelength radio transmission, providing convenience, intelligence and controllability. In this paper, a home lighting control system using arduino bluetooth interface with android smartphone as platform is proposed and prototyped. Technology in arduino, android smartphone and bluetooth are reviewed.  HC-05 bluetooth SPP (Serial Port Protocol) module, designed for transparent wireless serial connection setup is being used in the design. Android application is downloaded to android smartphone to monitor and control the operation of the lighting system remotely. The application facilitates in controlling the operating pins of Arduino. Design shows that arduino bluetooth interfacing can control a house lighting using an android smartphone as a platform. In future lighting home automation, timer will be included to be more energy- efficient and highly scalable. For secured, ubiquitously accessible and remotely controlled lighting system, GSM module will be incorporated in future designs. It would be extended to the large-scale environment such as colleges, offices and factories, among others.  


Author(s):  
Mahmoud Dinar

Abstract Despite the growing application of additive manufacturing (AM) in fabricating complex designs, most machines suffer from small working envelopes and slow processing speeds. One workaround to the problem of small throughput in AM is to partition the volume of a desired object and fabricate sub-volumes in parallel. Prior related work has focused on two problems. One is the geometric division problem, disregarding AM benefits and challenges in determining partitions. Others attempt to install multiple AM processing heads on the same machine, ensuring seamless bonding between deposited material from different heads while avoiding interference among them. A missed opportunity lies in deploying many independent machines simultaneously while considering benefits and limitations of AM. To that end, objects too large to be fabricated on one machine, are divided primarily into cubes that exploit benefits of AM. Specifically, the cubes are hollowed out in the direction of printing to reduce weight while avoiding the need for support structure, and depending on load conditions, packed in different orientations to mitigate material anisotropy.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document