Are robots going to become spirits? They can actually grow autonomously!

Does it look like a sapling rising from the ground and growing into a big tree?

To be precise, it is not a robot, but a digital manufacturing platform.

Fiberbots

Fiberbots incorporate collaborative robotic manufacturing technology to generate highly complex material architectures.

Such a digital manufacturing platform consists of a group of robots and a control system.

Each robot wraps a fiberglass filament around itself to form a high-strength tubular structure that can be built in parallel and interwoven to quickly create architectural structures.

At the same time, each robot is movable and uses its own sensors to feedback current environmental information and control the length and curvature of each individual tube based on the system protocol pre-designed by the control system.

This enables designers to achieve the desired design structure through simple control system parameters without having to adjust each robot individually.

In fact, it is not difficult to see that Fiberbots possess one of nature's most precious qualities: synergy.

The original problem of a single robot is transformed into a problem of a cluster of robots, which simplifies the entire robot control.

It also references the techniques used by various organisms to control and optimize multiple material properties by using hierarchical structures. For example, spiders can spin protein fibers to weave silk webs, which has the ability to adjust local and global material properties, adjusting the composition of its materials and the placement of fibers to create strong and flexible spider webs.

Seeing this, one can’t help but associate Fiberbots with 3D printing technology. The latter prints layer by layer, while the former prints roll by roll, but both produce specific shapes and structures by stacking materials.

In order to obtain rich structural properties, Fiberbots also supports a variety of fiber weaving patterns.

Using the same material, you can make a short, small and solid concrete pier, or you can make a tall and sparse bamboo basket.

Most current research efforts in swarm construction focus on the aggregation of discrete building components (e.g., blocks or beams) mimicking traditional construction methods.

In other words, it's just a change of person moving the bricks.

Typically, these systems are developed around specific modular or prefabricated components, greatly limiting the possibilities for complex structures.

The emergence of Fiberbots fundamentally changes digital structures through the method of swarm manufacturing, producing products and objects that are far larger than the size of robots.

At the same time, by providing novel manufacturing processes such as robotic weaving, combined with its non-hierarchical structure, the difficulty of generating modeling functions when digitizing structures is reduced. In addition, through group sensing and actuation, the system can become more responsive and better able to adapt to the environment.

In fact, like 3D printing, although Fiberbots has opened up a new manufacturing route, it also needs to face the problems faced in realizing complex structural characteristics. At the same time, how to integrate more materials together for compilation will also be a question worth thinking about.

Many of you may ask, how do Fiberbots grow forward by winding themselves? In fact, each Fiberbot expands itself first to wind the wire.

Then shrink your own escape technique.

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