Swarm Fabrication: Reconfigurable 3D Printers and Drawing Plotters Made of Swarm Robots
This addresses the need for scalable and reconfigurable fabrication tools for users in interactive and flexible manufacturing, though it is an incremental step in swarm robotics and fabrication.
The paper tackles the problem of creating flexible, on-demand fabrication machines by introducing Swarm Fabrication, where swarm robots are used to construct reconfigurable 3D printers and drawing plotters, demonstrating a functional X-Y-Z plotter with multiple robots.
We introduce Swarm Fabrication, a novel concept of creating on-demand, scalable, and reconfigurable fabrication machines made of swarm robots. We present ways to construct an element of fabrication machines, such as motors, elevator, table, feeder, and extruder, by leveraging toio robots and 3D printed attachments. By combining these elements, we demonstrate constructing a X-Y-Z plotter with multiple toio robots, which can be used for drawing plotters and 3D printers. We also show the possibility to extend our idea to more general-purpose fabrication machines, which include 3D printers, CNC machining, foam cutters, line drawing devices, pick and place machines, 3D scanning, etc. Through this, we draw a future vision, where the swarm robots can construct a scalable and reconfigurable fabrication machines on-demand, which can be deployed anywhere the user wishes. We believe this fabrication technique will become a means of interactive and highly flexible fabrication in the future.