From Siemens They have been betting on the world of 3D printing for some time, although in a somewhat different way. As you can see, rather than creating a 3D printer with a series of technical characteristics common to those of all the companies that already carry out this action, they have opted to develop a series of spider-shaped robots, baptized as Siemens Spiders o sispis, capable of creating plastic objects autonomously.
The objective of this research is to create what the German company itself comments as a kind of «army»Robots capable of interacting and collaborating with each other in order to be able to create larger and above all complex structures by means of 3D printing so that, any user, only had to pass the files of the complete design and let the spiders work on its manufacture without the need for individual programming or anything similar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVDbGPUlqlU
Based on the statements made by livio dalloro, product manager, modeling and simulation:
At the moment the SiSpis can only generate very simple objects, such as cubes, but the idea is that one day they will get to climb a larger and more complex object, making it on the fly. Modularity, flexibility and autonomy are the most important trends in manufacturing.
At the moment all we have is a series of robots equipped with 3D cameras and a laser scanner to map the environment in which it works. One task that Siemens engineers are working on is developing a location system with a high degree of precision to ensure that each robot can work together with the rest in a much more efficient way. Another important point is that robots are capable of learning to interact fully autonomously with their environment since, today, although they are partially automated, the truth is that they are not sophisticated enough.