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A Multi-Robot Approach to 3D Printing

A team at the University of Michigan is working together to enhance standard 3D printing practices for construction — making the process more efficient, accurate, and cost effective. Watch this video to see their innovative approach to 3D printing methods, which has potential to sustainably transform the future of the industry.

Topics:
Manufacturing & Prototyping

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 Construction doesn't have a choice. It's in a  stage where it has to make a change to survive and   also it needs to respond to rapid urbanization.  Right now it's one-third of the world's CO2 is   produced from construction, one-third of the  world's waste is from the construction industry   and we are running short of construction workers  and building materials. Through 3D printing,   especially, it will open up new opportunities.  I am Mana Meibodi. I'm an architect by practice,   specializing in computational design and robot  construction. I'm an assistant professor leading   Dart Laboratory, which is an interdisciplinary  research team. We focus on pioneering novel   technologies in the realm of Robotics and 3D  printing. In construction, there has been more   and more interest in employing 3D printers on the  largest scale and in construction. 3D printing   in architecture and construction is still facing  some challenges today, scalability, affordability,  

    00:00:58 speed, uh, even the material that you can print  with. The concept of multi-robotic 3D printing is   to overcome these challenges. Multiple robots can  build much faster or print much faster. They also   would allow you to work with multiple materials  at the same time, meaning that we can print a more   complex building part that we didn't have the  capacity for before. It will make things more   affordable. The ability to 3D print high-precision  buildings with high performance with multiple   robots means that we can catch up with the speed  that is needed. It means also, the prices of parts   or buildings or infrastructure we are building  are being reduced. We will be eliminating   waste. Obviously, with 3D printing, you don't  need formwork. You will also place material   precisely and strategically where it's needed  and this also means we will be resourceful so you   use less material and we can recycle material.  We could use sawdust that we are throwing out  

    00:02:01 yearly and not using it. We could turn this into a  building material. We could eliminate cutting more   trees but rather use the waste that we have right  now from other products that we are producing or   from our own buildings. Turn this into a raw  material that we are printing with in order   to meet the challenges of decarbonization. New  construction, as well as societal challenges, we   need to rethink the whole system of construction  and building. For building design, multi-root 3D   printing is for sure going to be one of the key  pieces of that puzzle. To me, this is not only a   new technology, it is a new introduction to  a new field within architecture engineering   and construction. I think we will see a lot of  human interaction with machines in contrast to   the prior time when automation meant replacing  the labor. We don't absolutely don't want to   replace them. We want to harness their knowledge,  to take some of the tasks that maybe are the more  

    00:03:03 dangerous ones or maybe are things that could be  done in an automated way and use a smart system   to do that. The workers get to be more efficient  and working on the the more maybe fun parts of   the job, you know the really challenging, really  thought-provoking components, and now they could   start to tackle this really big problem which is  that there's just so much building that is being   asked of this group of people. We will have to  educate completely a new set of future leaders   in technology for design and technology for  construction. We really need material scientists,   roboticists, controllers, and designers, working  together to create this new field. OVPR has   mechanisms such as Bold Challenges that would  accelerate team building in a very meaningful way.   Construction and design in the built environment  are an integrated problem so you need kind of   larger, much larger teams to work on these complex  problems because buildings are not are simple, are  

    00:04:09 not simple problems. You can take your research  and go to the department, engineering department,   or business department, and find other professors  who are interested in taking your technology and   expanding it in their realm. Bringing all those  people into the room who all truly care about how   do we make an impact in this industry but how do  we do it from the perspective of many different   stakeholders, not just, you know, an academic is  really key to that. Our work with them to envision   an establishment of the world's leading robotic  3D printing center has been extremely helpful   to also rethinking what does this mean for the  United States, but also across the world. [Music]