A Mobile Additive Manufacturing Robot Framework for Smart Manufacturing Systems

TL;DR

This work tackles on-demand, customized production by merging additive manufacturing with autonomous mobile robotics in a 'manufacture and deliver' framework. It introduces a hierarchical, modular control architecture and system-level scheduling to coordinate process, mobility, and planning, aided by cloud-based control. Through a mobility-focused FDM case study and a ARENA-based throughput simulation, the approach demonstrates throughput gains and highlights factors like vibration and charging that influence performance. The findings indicate mobile AMR-enabled manufacturing can boost flexibility and responsiveness in smart factories, with potential for on-site and remote environments, and point to future multi-level decision-making and cloud-enabled control. Overall, the paper lays groundwork for scalable, on-demand manufacturing that leverages mobility to optimize production flow.

Abstract

Recent technological innovations in the areas of additive manufacturing and collaborative robotics have paved the way toward realizing the concept of on-demand, personalized production on the shop floor. Additive manufacturing process can provide the capability of printing highly customized parts based on various customer requirements. Autonomous, mobile systems provide the flexibility to move custom parts around the shop floor to various manufacturing operations, as needed by product requirements. In this work, we proposed a mobile additive manufacturing robot framework for merging an additive manufacturing process system with an autonomous mobile base. Two case studies showcase the potential benefits of the proposed mobile additive manufacturing framework. The first case study overviews the effect that a mobile system can have on a fused deposition modeling process. The second case study showcases how integrating a mobile additive manufacturing machine can improve the throughput of the manufacturing system. The major findings of this study are that the proposed mobile robotic AM has increased throughput by taking advantage of the travel time between operations/processing sites. It is particularly suited to perform intermittent operations (e.g., preparing feedstock) during the travel time of the robotic AM. One major implication of this study is its application in manufacturing structural components (e.g., concrete construction, and feedstock preparation during reconnaissance missions) in remote or extreme terrains with on-site or on-demand feedstocks.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Overview of the proposed framework.
• Figure 2: The experimental mobile 3D printing platform consisting of a mobile robot and a 3D printer. The robot arm will be used to extend the proposed approach in future case studies, as described in Section \ref{['sec:conclusion']}.
• Figure 3: Annotated images of the three printed parts for three different experiments: (a) a stationary print; (b) moving forward during a print; (c) moving forward and backward during a print several times, including over a bump during the last move. Note that the first layer is at the bottom of these images and the print direction was upward.
• Figure 4: The printed object detaching due to vibrations caused by the mobile platform going over the bump.
• Figure 5: Examples of manufacturing system simulation: (a) the existing approach; (b) the proposed approach.