Autonomous 3D Printing Drones the First of Its Kind to Build, Repair Structures In-Flight

3D printing has been gaining popularity in the construction industry as companies use mobile robots to print materials in construction projects, like steel and concrete structures. An international team of researchers led by drone specialist Mirko Kovac of the Imperial College London and Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories of Materials Science and Technology, presents their 3D printing drones.

According to Science Daily, they use the collective building methods inspired by bees and incorporate them into the drones to create large, intricate structures. These autonomous drones are collectively known as Aerial Additive Manufacturing (Aerial0AM), which a human controller monitors to work cooperatively from a single blueprint to construct and repair buildings in difficult-to-reach areas.

(Photo: Unsplash/Goh Rhy Yan)
Autonomous 3D Printing Drones the First of Its Kind to Build, Repair Structures In-Flight

3D Printing Drones Reduce Costs and Risk in Construction Industry

Constructing or repairing structures is not easy and could be expensive due to manual labor costs. But the 3D printing researchers developed could build and repair while flying simultaneously, reducing construction costs and risks.

According to a report by ElectronicsForU.com, this new method that uses 3D printing flying robots is inspired by how bees and wasps work collaboratively to build their strong and intricate structures.

Kovac said that their study has proven that drones could work autonomously and simultaneously build or repair structures in the lab. He noted that the technology is scalable and could be used to repair hard-to-reach buildings.

3D printing machines usually are static and mobile robots that print materials useful in the construction industry. But adapting the technology into a fleet of drones is another level. The Aerial-AM uses 3D printing and a path-planning framework that will help it adapt to the different geometry of the structure as the construction project progresses.

In the experiment, researchers used autonomous 3D printing drones to develop four bespoke cemented mixtures that they will use to build structures. The fleet comprises BuilDrones that deposit materials during flight and ScanDrones that implement continuous measures of the output of BuilDrones.

The drones analyze the printed geometry in real-time to adapt to the structure and ensure they build it with the right specifications. Researchers said that the drones exhibit accuracy of five millimeters, providing future possibilities for building and repairing structures.

Building and Testing the 3D Printing Drones

The team also met some challenges in creating the first flying 3D printing robot. They had to design a system that deposits the material while remaining stable in flight, and the drone should be light enough to fly even carrying the heavy printing material.

Daily Beast reports that researchers used rapidly hardening polyurethane foam but engineered it to become a lightweight version of the cement that the robot can use to address the weight issue.

In testing the robots, each drone was programmed to build an almost seven-foot cylindrical tower of foam while another drone scanned its progress after each layer and verified that the printing material was properly deposited. The structure looks like a cross between a wicker basket and a drip sandcastle.

The team also simulated constructing cylinders and domes using three drones and adding more further to test the capacity of the autonomous 3D printing drones. All in all, it took the drones 300 seconds per layer to construct each layer of the cylinder structure or a total of 2.3 hours to finish it.

The technology is promising, but researchers said that before a fleet of drones can be contracted to build skyscrapers, it needs to improve on the manufacturing and robotics side.

Here's a video of the drone as explained by Nature: