SBIR Phase I: Swarm 3D Printing and Assembly for Autonomous Manufacturing

这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是通过多台3D打印机和装配机器人的合作开发一个蜂群3D打印和装配（SPA）平台。SPA平台提供了一种新的方法，可以更快、更经济地使用多种材料进行大尺寸打印。它解决了将3D打印用于商业或个人使用的几个主要障碍（例如，有限的打印能力和可扩展性，相对较高的成本），并为不同行业提供了商业机会，例如建筑和建筑。该项目的最终愿景是开发一个具有自主移动机器人的通用数字工厂模型。这种工厂模式可以在世界各地的社区中复制，以创建智能工厂网络作为数字制造基础设施，从而使按需定制制造变得负担得起。类似于电网和互联网的基础设施如何改变社会，这种设想的数字化制造基础设施将使产品设计师和企业家更容易、更经济地将新产品推向市场，而不会因生产和供应链管理的复杂性和成本而气馁。这项小型企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目旨在通过蜂群3D打印和组装平台（SPA）扩展当前的3D打印能力。SPA将3D打印技术与群体机器人技术协同集成，从而有效地解决了与打印时间、打印成本和打印质量有关的问题——这是当前3D打印技术无法同时实现的三个目标。本课题的主要智力优势在于提供了多台独立3D打印机与机器人协同3D打印制造的新途径，提供了一个模块化、可重构的数字化制造平台。在本项目中，我们提出了一种基于新型移动3D打印机的硬件平台，该平台具有选择性装配机器人臂（SCARA）和一种新的软件来协调多台移动3D打印机和装配机器人。这可以实现多颜色和多材料的打印，以及将预制组件集成到打印作业中。预期的技术成果是一个集成的SPA系统，能够打印大型物体，同时确保打印质量与目前的小型商用3D打印机相当。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to develop a swarm 3D printing and assembly (SPA) platform via the cooperation of multiple 3D printers and assembly robots. The SPA platform provides a new approach for faster and affordable large-size printing with multiple materials. It addresses several major barriers (e.g., limited printing capability and scalability, relatively high cost) for the adoption of 3D printing for business or personal use and provides commercial opportunities in different industries, such as architecture and construction. The ultimate vision of the project is to develop a model of a generic digital factory with autonomous mobile robots. This factory model can be replicated in communities around the world to create a network of smart factories as a digital manufacturing infrastructure such that on-demand, customized manufacturing becomes affordable. Similar to how the infrastructure of the electricity grid and the Internet transformed society, this envisioned digital manufacturing infrastructure will make it easier and more economical for product designers and entrepreneurs to bring new products to market without being discouraged by the complexity and cost of production and supply chain management.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to expand current 3D printing capabilities with a swarm 3D printing and assembly platform (SPA). SPA synergistically integrates 3D printing techniques with swarm robotics, thus effectively addressing the issues pertaining to print time, print cost and print quality - the three objectives that current 3D printing technologies cannot simultaneously achieve. The primary intellectual merit of this project lies in a new approach to realizing cooperative 3D printing and manufacturing between multiple independent 3D printers and robots, which provides a modular and reconfigurable digital manufacturing platform. In this project, we propose a new hardware platform based on a novel mobile 3D printer with a Selective Compliance Assembly Robot Arm (SCARA) and a new software to coordinate multiple mobile 3D printers and assembly robots. This enables multi-color and multi-material printing, as well as integration of pre-manufactured components into print jobs. The anticipated technical outcome is an integrated SPA system that is capable of printing large-scale objects while assuring print quality comparable to current small-scale commercial 3D printers.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.