FIBERBOTS Swarm Autonomously Builds Large-Scale Structures

Some of nature’s most successful organisms collaborate in a swarm fashion; bees and ants cooperate to rapidly build structures much larger than themselves. Researchers from MIT's Media Lab  have developed a digital fabrication platform that fuses cooperative robotic manufacturing with abilities to generate highly sophisticated material architectures. The platform can enable design and digital fabrication of large-scale structures with high spatial resolution. The FIBERBOTS are a swarm of robots designed to wind fiberglass filament around themselves to create high-strength tubular structures. These structures can be built in parallel and interwoven to rapidly create architectural structures.