A swarming of 3D printers flying in flight inspired by bees
A swarm 3D printing drones, designed after nature’s builders, work together to create large structures while in flight.
A multidisciplinary consortium spanning various universities has developed a process known as “aerial additive manufacturing” to 3D print structures in real time using drones. These drones could not only build structures in-flight, but they could also monitor their capabilities and adjust them as needed.
3D-printed construction or additive manufacturing can be done in one of two ways currently. In one, the parts of the final structure are assembled on-site and then assembled. This is similar to Lego. Other 3D printers are ground-based and are more suited for environments that require adaptable construction.
The size of the structures that can be printed on existing, ground-based 3-D printers is limited. “This is limited by the size of the printer,” said Mirko Kovac, a researcher at Imperial College London in the UK. “If you have mobile multi-agent systems, they are basically scalable, so they can print fully in 3D, and build larger structures with very small systems.” A large structure could potentially be built with multiple printing agents that are brought to the site of construction.
A crowd of 3D printers
Kovac and co-workers looked to natural builders like wasps and bees when they developed their idea for aerial 3D printing. With the help of their hivemates, bees can build structures that are larger than they are.
The team created two types drones to test their theory: The BuilDrone, capable of autonomously extruding and laying down various building materials in flight. A second robot, called a ScanDrone, scans the structure as it is being built and provides input to the builder. It’s similar to how wasps or bees scan their environment. “The trajectory of the 3D printer — the flying printer robot — is adjusted based on the scan,” added Kovac.
Both drones can work in three dimensions simultaneously or sequentially. They can also use a special building arm to place building materials with a manufacturing accuracy of just a few millimeters.
Initial
For their experiments, the researchers used two different materials — a foam and a cementitious material. These materials needed to be lightweight so that they could be transported by drone.
The drones were used first to create a 2.05 m high cylinder made of 72 layers foam material. This was a proof of concept. Next, the drones made another smaller cylinder, 0.18m high and with 28 layers of cement-like material. To test if their manufacturing process could be scaled up using 15 drones, the researchers ran a simulation to print larger structures.
Kovac said that although both the drone’s battery and the construction material were manually charged, they could be automated in the future.
Aerial additive is particularly useful because of their adaptability and mobility. Drones could be used for repairs to cracks in the façade to prevent heat losses and fissures within gas or water pipes. Repair-in-flight could also eliminate the need to scaffold.
Aerial additive manufacturing can be used to create design elements and could eventually link up with ground-based 3D printing machines as well as humans in order to build large-scale structures.
Reference: Ketao Zhang, et al., Multiple additive manufacturing via aerials autonomous robotsNature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04988-4
Feature image. Drones could also be used in space, as a part of a future Mars mission. Image credit: Yusuf Furkan KAYA, Aerial Robotics Laboratory, Imperial College London / Empa
