Additive manufacturing, or rapid prototyping has been around since the 1980s, and remained a rather obscure branch of engineering that didn’t attract much public attention.
There were evolutionary stages the process went through, as the technology matured. Each step had its own name until 3-D printing emerged as a sort of umbrella for a bunch of related technological processes.
That was six or eight years ago and the name — and the various technologies used —quickly came into common use as researchers found all sorts of uses for them.
Those uses varied from "printing" a split to be inserted in a child’s throat to keep the airway open so she could breathe, to 3-D printing of some aircraft parts, as well as larger things, like houses and apartment buildings.
What many people overlooked about the process was that the computer controls it uses, much like the computer controls used for drones, those unmanned aerial vehicles that pop into the news more and more. Details of the job are entered into a computer, which controls the print job or the drone’s flight path.
A 3-D printer is simply a type of industrial robot. The relationship between robotics and 3-D printing had been there all along. Most of us simply never noticed it.
Now, though, that relationship is what’s behind a project that would let flying robots —drones — fly into disaster areas and build shelters for survivors using 3-D printing technology.
The desire to use drones in disaster response is not new. For at least two decades, people have sought to find ways to send them into disaster areas that are too dangerous to send people into, or places that people simply can’t reach. Once there, they could assess damage, take photographs and send the images back to base.
But having drones actually build liveable structures was out of the question.
How that could be done might be found in a four-year collaborative research project involving researchers from three prestigious British universities: University of Bath, Imperial College and University College London.
The project will take time because in some areas researchers are starting from scratch. For instance, the 3-D printing systems now available are generally too large and inflexible to be flown into remote areas and actually work there. So miniaturization is needed. At the same time, though, researchers must solve the problem of supplying the robots with the necessary building materials — the "ink" from which they will fashion new buildings.
That’s what led to the idea of using a "swarm" of robots.
So the system engineers are working on what will amount to an entirely new printing system to remotely manufacture structures such as shelters and bridges for those in need. The team is working on the world’s first 3-D printing system consisting of a swarm of aerial robots that can autonomously assess need and manufacture buildings.
The plan is to miniaturize the printers and give them aerial capabilities so they can be more mobile and able to manufacture complex highrise structures if need be.
The robots would really be flying mini-factories. A swarm of them would fly into a disaster area then use on-board Building Information Modeling (BIM) systems to survey the landscape and create a model. Then they would work together to erect new buildings.
Mirko Kovac, of Imperial College London’s department of aeronautics, is leading the team, which has received more than £3.4 million (about C$6.18 million).
Technologists are often accused of building some new electronic gadget simply because they can, not because there is a need for it. But this system, if the researchers can bring it off, would be something for which there is a demonstrated need.
Disaster relief is more than flying food and blankets into rough airstrips, or dropping them by parachute. The people also need shelter.
Swarms of robots that can fly in and build new homes is a worthwhile objective.
Korky Koroluk is an Ottawa-based freelance writer. Send comments to editor@dailycommercialnews.com.
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