I-Corps: Swarm Three Dimensional Printing and Assembly Platform

Award ID: 1928756

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to accelerate the development and adoption of 3D printing technologies for industry use. Although 3D printing has been increasingly implemented in various industries, its broad adoption has been impeded by the limited 3D printing capabilities and high cost. This I-Corps project will explore the market potential of a new swarm 3D printing and assembly (SPA) platform, which employs a swarm of mobile 3D printers and robots to cooperate for digital manufacturing. Due to the modularity, flexibility, and reconfigurability, the SPA platform can significantly increase 3D printing capabilities at relatively low cost, which will facilitate the adoption of 3D printing and digital manufacturing technologies in different industries, such as construction, architecture, film, and medical industries. The SPA platform can be used to build a network of digital factories to provide on-demand customized digital manufacturing to different industries around the globe, establishing a digital manufacturing infrastructure for society. This I-Corps project further develops a novel digital manufacturing system, the swarm 3D printing and assembly (SPA) platform, which expands the current 3D printing capabilities at relatively low cost. The SPA platform consists of many individual printhead-carrying mobile robots working together to print and assemble products based on digital models. Compared to traditional 3D printing technologies that print materials layer by layer with a single 3D printer, the SPA platform will first divide the print job into smaller printing tasks using a chunking algorithm and assign them to different robots, which are then wirelessly coordinated by a scheduling algorithm to complete the printing tasks in parallel and in sequence while avoiding collisions. Results from research on both the hardware and software platform demonstrate the promise of this technology. Objects with dimensions larger than the printers themselves have already been successfully printed. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Program Director: Ruth Shuman